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ROBERT BROWNING. 



POEMS NARRATIVE AND 
LYRICAL 

REQUIRED FOR COLLEGE ENTRANCE 



EDITED 

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES 

BY 



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HEAD OP THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH 
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PREFATORY NOTE 

The poems in this volume are those suggested for 
reading in the later years of the high-school course. 
They have been edited as simply as possible, with the 
desire to be of service to both pupil and teacher. 

The editor wishes to acknowledge his obligation to his 

sister, Emily P. St. John, of the Manual Training High 

School of Brooklyn, for assistance in the preparation of 

"The Life of Browning" and the notes on his poems. 

He is also much indebted to the editors of numerous 

preceding editions of Gray, Goldsmith, Byron, and 

Browning. 

R. P. ST. J. 



vu 



CONTENTS 

PAGK 

Prefatory Note vii 

Introduction xi 

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 

Life of Thomas Gray 1 

Bibliography 3 

Introduction to the Elegy 4 

The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ... 5 

Notes 10 

The Deserted Village 

Life of Goldsmith 18 

Bibliography 21 

Introduction to the Deserted Village .... 22 

Dedication to the Deserted Village 22 

The Deserted Village 24 

Notes 38 

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth, and 
The Prisoner op Chillon 

Life of Byron 48 

Bibliography of Byron 54 

Introduction to Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ... 55 

Preface to the First and Second Cantos .... 57 
ix 



CONTENTS 



Dedicatory Epistle addressed to Hobhouse 
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto the Fourth 

Notes to Childe Harold 

Introduction to The Prisoner of Chillon . 
The Prisoner of Chillon . . . . . 
Notes to The Prisoner of Chillon 



PAGE 

59 
64 
134 
147 
149 
163 



Selections from Browning's "PoeMs 
Life of Robert Browning . 
Bibliography of Robert Browning 
Cavalier Tunes .... 
The Lost Leader 

How they Brought the Good News f 
Home Thoughts, from Abroad 
Home Thoughts, from the Sea . 
Incident of the French Camp . 
Herv^ Riel .... 
Pheidippides .... 
My Last Duchess . . 
Up at a Villa — Down in the City 
The Boy and the Angel . 
Evelyn Hope .... 
One Word More 
Notes to Browning's Poems 



om Ghent to A 



168 
174 
175 
178 
179 
182 
183 
183 
185 
191 
198 
200 
204 
208 
210 
219 



INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF 
POETRY 

Anthropology tells us that poetry, music, the 
drama; and dancing grew up together and were origi- 
nally one art. Savages all the world over have been 
accustomed after the day's work to meet around the 
camp-fire for social intercourse. There the rhythm of 
the rude dance awakened their emotions and they 
sought to communicate even when language was so 
imperfect that they could not understand one another 
unless speech was supplemented by gesture, signs, and 
acting. While the entire companj^ kept time to the 
tom-tom, or to a single syllable endlessly repeated, a 
great hunter perhaps rushed in frenzy from the shadows 
and half sung, half acted, the story of the day's exploits. 

" I saw a deer. 
He did not see me." 

And in word and act, keeping perfect time to the 
rhythm of the dance, he crept towards the supposed 
deer, threw his lance, and rushed forward. When 
in this manner the events of the day had been recounted, 
one by one the company took up important past ex- 
ploits that remained in their memories. Perhaps several 
of the dancers helped to present the story of the bear 
that had been killed a week before. When the hurri- 
cane of a month before was undertaken, most of the 



xii INTRODUCTION 

dancers were able to take an active part, for through 
many repetitions both words and acting had become 
more or less conventionalized. The tribal battle of a 
year before was shouted as a chorus, for every savage 
was acquainted with the customary words. 

Such is the probable theory of the origin of the 
ballad. The word itself means dance song, for the 
savages often danced around the camp-fire to no music 
except the words of a crude song. Indeed, in Scotland, 
and even in America within the memory of people who 
died but a few years ago, men and women engaged in 
evening dances accompanied by no music except the 
rhythm of a ballad that they sang. No individual 
seemed to produce these songs. They came as the 
work of the community. They were better than any 
individual of those times could produce. They arose 
because the communal life stirred the emotions of 
men and came to song. Just as in the process of evo- 
lution certain plants and animals survived because 
they were the best fitted to cope with their environ- 
ment, so in the growth of the ballad, those expressions 
and words were preserved which represented most 
adequately the proper thought and emotion. Thus 
while generations passed, the communal ballads de- 
veloped and became better than any individual could 
have written. 

When the communities grew larger so that all could 
not gather around one camp-fire, and individual occu- 
pations appeared and culture advanced so that strangers 
were permitted to pass from village to village, minstrels 
arose who entertained circles of listeners by singing 
ballads which they collected wherever they could find 



INTRODUCTION Xlli 

them. Gradually the minstrels forgot the names of 
minor and remote heroes and ascribed the marvellous 
deeds recounted to some great national character just 
as to-day stories that are in keeping with Lincoln's 
personality are often erroneously ascribed to Lincoln, 
although the tales were, in fact, famous long before his 
time. Sometimes ballads that were originally separate 
were joined. In this way it has happened in the history 
of almost every race that a group of ballads relating to 
some great national hero has been woven together 
into an epic. Until minstrels deliberately revised bal- 
lads or joined together ballads after this manner, there 
were no individual poets. Probably a ballad in praise 
of a patron was the first poetry strictly original with 
one author. 

The Robin Hood Ballads that we know, or the ballads 
popular among the country folk in England a century or 
two ago, were, of course, very different in content from 
the ballads sung around the camp-fire by our savage 
ancestors. Yet the essence, the spirit, of each is the 
same. Primitive poetry, we have seen, is an emotional 
view of life rhythmically expressed. Such is all true 
poetry whether written to-day or written two hundred 
years ago or before the flood. Human life cannot be 
altered fundamentally, but the modes of living are con- 
tinually changing. Poetry must adapt itself accord- 
ingly. The songs of the South Sea Islanders served 
adequately their needs, but they cannot serve ours. 
Poetry must accommodate itself to human thought and 
progress or it will fail to awaken the emotional response 
which is the source of its power. 

One would think that poetry would always arise natu- 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

rally from the life of those who produced it, and therefore 
that the verse produced from generation to generation 
would change as insensibly and gradually as civiliza- 
tion changes. But art, including poetry, is governed 
to so great an extent by precedent, because of the in- 
fluence of the work of geniuses and great critics, that it 
lags behind the material progress that men make and 
catches up only when, through the influence of other 
geniuses or great critics, it is forced to make the nec- 
essary readjustment. When poetry thus suddenly 
changes in order to adapt itself to the progress of civili- 
zation, the process is often called a return to nature. A 
return to human nature, conditioned as it is every in- 
stant by ten thousand forces which are continuously 
developing it, would be a more accurate expression. 
Such a movement is a revival of the past only so far as 
the present has become artificial and neglectful of emo- 
tion or of some other of the fundamental principles of 
human art ; it is a search after the new in so far as there 
have arisen in the progress of civilization thoughts and 
feelings that have never found expression in poetry. 
The great poet, however, is often a prophet. He fre- 
quentl}^ feels the warmth of the coming day when less 
sensitive minds are hardly aware of a gleam along the 
tops of the mountains. In this sense does the progress 
of poetry often precede the development of human life 
and civilization. 

In the history of English literature the most important 
return to nature is that which reached its climax in 
1798 and is known as the Romantic Movement. The 
poetry of the previous period exemplified in the work of 
Pope, was the product of a conservative, formal, cold, 



INTRODUCTION XV 

intellectual, utilitarian, and artistocratic age. This 
so-called classical poetry conformed to an artistic stand- 
ard so closely that it was seldom very original ; it often 
sacrificed the thought to secure a polished form; the 
ideas expressed were sensible rather than beautiful or 
passionate ; high moral views were rarely presented ; 
the social life of men and women of breeding and culture 
was usually the theme. On the other hand, romantic 
poetry was free once more to represent in any one of a 
vast number of artistic verse forms whatever interested 
men and stirred their emotions ; but whatever it treated 
it presented in an aesthetic and imaginative aspect, and 
left argument and instruction to prose writers. It was 
based rather on the life of the individual than on the life 
of the social group. This is seen in a love for solitude 
or at least for nature unaltered by man. The stand- 
point was the subjective view of the individual poet 
rather than the objective aspect common to the crowd. 
It upheld the individual rights, not merely of the great, 
but even of infants, and of the poor, the weak, and the 
lowly. 

The Romantic Movement grew out of a great wave of 
domestic and political reform that swept over Europe 
during the eighteenth century. This period in history 
is sometimes known as the Age.of Revolution because of 
the great changes that occurred in social conditions and 
later in government. The American Revolution of 
1776 and the French Revolution of 1798 mark crises in 
its progress. As might be expected the upheaval took 
place intellectually before it was worked out in deeds. 

Writings that did much to bring about the French 
Revolution were written as early as 1760 by .Jean Jacques 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

Rousseau. In poetry the first important evidence of the 
new movement is found in Thomson's Seasons, pubhshed 
in 1730. The author, while classical in manner, wrote on 
nature and rejected the heroic couplet, the accepted 
verse form of most of the classical poets. The \torks 
of Gray and Goldsmith, published a few years later, 
are likewise transitional poems that mark the progress 
of the struggle between the old and the new. In the 
works of Byron the movement found most intense ex- 
pression. Its influence is still felt, probably not because 
the movement is still in progress, but because of the 
permanent effects it has left on art. This influence is 
felt even in the poems of the most modern of the poets 
in this volume, Robert Browning, at once representative 
of his own age and of the eager questioning soul of the 
nineteenth century. 



POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY 
CHURCHYARD 

THOMAS GRAY 

Thomas Gray, the author of The Elegy in a Country 
Churchyard, was born in London, December 26, 1716. 
To his father, a wealthy broker and scrivener, he owed 
little but ill-treatment and neglect. His mother, with 
the assistance of a maiden sister, kept a millinery shop 
and so supported her children and provided as well as 
she was able for Gray's education. He was sent to Eton, 
where he distinguished himself in scholarship, but rather 
than join his comrades at their games, he preferred to 
wander in the fields about Stoke-Pogis. 

On leaving Cambridge in 1738 without having com- 
pleted the work required for a degree, he travelled in 
Europe with his friend, Horace Walpole, the son of the 
Whig minister. He desired on his return in 1741 to 
study law;- and he took his degree of LL.B. in 1743. 
He did not, however, become a lawyer, but took resi- 
dence at Cambridge University, where, with the excep- 
tion of two years spent at the British Museum, he 
continued to reside for the remainder of his life. He 
had until 1768 no official connection wdth the University, 
and did not teach, but lived the life of a quiet student. 

Next to Milton he was the most scholarly of the 
English poets. He was proficient in almost every 
branch of learning except mathematics. He avoided 

B 1 



2 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

society, and in the college chambers lived the life of a 
gentle recluse. He had a dignified bearing and a melan- 
choly cast of mind. He was fastidious almost to effemi- 
nacy. His clothes and manners were faultless. In his 
orderly room was a harpsichord and at his window 
china vases of flowers. He had a great horror of fire 
and had exercised his ingenuity in devising several sorts 
of fire-escapes, which he frequently used as a result of 
the false alarms of his fellow-students. His character 
was so peculiar that even after he was made professor of 
modern history in 1768, he was still subjected to various 
petty annoyances by the rude and thoughtless under- 
graduates. 

During his mother's life, Gray spent most of his vaca- 
tions at Stoke-Pogis, where his mother and her sister 
lived in a beautiful country house that commanded a 
distant view of Eton. There he wrote several of his 
famous poems, and there with love and affection he re- 
paid the two heroic women for the sacrifices they had 
made in his behalf. The aunt died in 1749 and was 
buried in Stoke-Pogis churchyard, and four years later 
Gray's mother was laid beside her. On a slab are the 
following lines which Gray himself wrote: "In the vault 
beneath are deposited, in hope of a joyful resurrection, 
the remains of Mary Antrobus. She died, unmarried, 
Nov. 5, 1749, aged sixty-six. In the same pious confi- 
dence, beside her friend and sister, here sleep the remains 
of Dorothy Gray, widow ; the tender, careful mother of 
many children, one of whom alone has the misfortune to 
survive her. She died March, 1753, aged sixty-seven." 
Without further inscription under the same tombstone, 
in 1771, was buried Thomas Gray, the poet. 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 3 

As a result of his fastidious taste and critical delibera- 
tion Gray wrote little verse. As he grew older his writ- 
ings were romantic in character, but he never opposed 
his native classical desire for precision and polish. In 
1740 he was so little conscious of the true nature of 
poetry or of the new trend in life and verse that he began 
to write a Latin epic poem that was to contain Locke's 
philosophy in poetic form. In 1742 he wrote the three 
odes, On the Spring, On a Distant Prospect of Eton Col- 
lege, and to Adversity. These contained the conven- 
tional classical moralizing and personified abstractions. 
In 1750 the Elegy was pubhshed. In 1757 appeared 
The Bard and the Progress of Poesy, poems that were 
highly imaginative and more romantic in form and spirit 
than the work of any of his contemporaries. The 
Norse and Welsh poems that appeared a few years later 
abandoned classical models altogether and sought in the 
literature of rude and untutored races those human 
characteristics and passions which are the basis of all 
true poetry. 

Bibliography 

Essays in Criticism, Matthew Arnold. The Macmillan Co. 
Gray, Thomas : Letters, D. C. Tovey. The Macmillan Co. 
Gray and his Friends, D. C. Tovey. Cambridge, England. 
Gray and his School, Leslie Stephen. London, England. 
Latest Literary Essays, Lowell. Houghton, Mifflin Co. 
Life of Gray, Edmund Gosse. The Macmillan Co. 
Lives of Famous Poets, William M. Rossetti. 
Lives of the Poets, Samuel Johnson, 
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Gray, Mason. 
The Poetical works of Gray, John Bradshaw. The Mac- 
millan Co. 
Works of Gray, Edmund Gosse. The Macmillan Co. 



POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



THE ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY 
CHURCHYARD 

The Elegy, published 1750, stands midway between 
Gray's classical and romantic poems; and its style gives 
evidence of both classical and romantic tendencies. 
The theme was not new. Somewhat similar moralizing 
in a graveyard had appeared in previous classical poems 
written by Parnell, Young, Blair, and others. The 
poet accepts society as it is ; there is no rebellion or 
questioning of authority or convention. Nevertheless, 
his feehng is democratic, and he shows a strong sympathy 
with the tillers of the soil and with nature. The language 
is usually concrete, and the point of view is subjective 
and individual. 

When the poem was first published, the departure 
from the heroic couplet was made less evident by print- 
ing the lines one after another without stanzaic breaks. 
It appeared in the form of a six-penny brochure and was 
well received ; four editions were printed within a year. 
Its popularity has increased with the passage of time. 
It is to-day the most widely known poem in English 
literature, and it has been translated into various lan- 
guages. If the passion expressed is chill and stately, it 
nevertheless, springs from human life. No other Eng- 
hsh poem is so nearly perfect in technique. Its pohshed 
diction, its remarkable felicity of expression, its exquisite 
metre, make it a finished work of art. 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 



THOMAS GRAY 
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard^ 

The curfew° tolls the knell of parting day, 
The lowing herd wind° slowly o'er the lea, 

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.° 

Now fades the glimmering landscape° on the sight, 5 

And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, 

And drowsy tinkhngs lull the distant folds : 

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower. 

The moping owl does to the moon complain lo 

Of such as, wandering near her secret bower. 
Molest her ancient solitary reign. 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade,° 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 

Each in his narrow cell forever laid, 15 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

The breezy cair of incense-breathing morn. 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed. 

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 20 



6 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
Or busy housewife ply° her evening care ; 

No children run to lisp° their sire's return, 
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. 

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 25 

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe° has broke : 

How jocund° did they drive their team afield ! 

How bowed° the woods beneath their sturdy stroke ! 

Let not ambition mock their useful toil, 

Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; 30 

Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 

The short and simple annals of the poor. 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power. 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 

Awaits alike the inevitable hour : — 35 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. ° 

Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault. 
If memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise. 

Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault° 
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. 40 

Can storied urn,° or animated bust. 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath ? 

Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust,° 
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death? 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 45 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire° ; 

Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed, 
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre : 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 7 

But knowledge to their eyes her ample page 

Rich with the spoils of time° did ne'er unroll ; 50 

Chill penury repressed their noble rage, 
And froze the genial current" of the soul. 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear ; 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 55 

And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

Some village Hampden, ° that, with dauntless breast, 
The little tyrant of his fields withstood, 

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest. 

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. 60 

The applause of listening senates to command, 
The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 
And read their history in a nation's eyes, 

Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone 65 

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined : 

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, 
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, 

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide. 

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 70 

Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride° 
With incense kindled at the Muses' flame.° 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife. 
Their sober wishes never learned to stray ; 

Along the cool sequestered vale of life 75 

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. 



8 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect 

Some frail memorial still erected nigh, 
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked, 

Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 80 

Their name, their j^ears, spelt by the unlettered Muse, 

The place of fame and elegy supply : 
And many a holy text around she strews, 

That teach the rustic moralist to die. 

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,° 85 

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, 

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, 
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind ? 

On some fond breast the parting soul relies. 

Some pious° drops the closing eye requires ; 90 

E'en from the tomb the voice of nature cries, ° 
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires. 

For thee,° who, mindful of the unhonored dead. 
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate ; 

If chance, by lonely contemplation led, 95 

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, — 

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 
'' Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away, 

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn : ° 100 

'' There at the foot of yonder nodding beech. 
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, 

His listless length at noontide would he stretch, 
And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 9 

" Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,° 105 

Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove, 

Now drooping, woful wan, like one forlorn. 

Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love. 

*' One morn I missed him on the customed hill,° 

Along the heath, and near his favorite tree; lio 

Another came ; nor yet beside the rill, 
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he : 

'' The next, with dirges due in sad array 

Slow through the churchway path we saw him 
borne : — 
Approach and read (for thou can'st read°) the lay 115 

'Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn.°" 

THE EPITAPH 

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth 
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown : 

Fair science° frowned not on his humble birth. 

And melancholy marked him for her own. 120 

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere. 
Heaven did a recompense as largely send : 

He gave to misery all he had, a tear. 

He gained from heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend. 

No farther seek his merits to disclose, 125 

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode 

(There they alike in trembling hope repose) 
The bosom° of his Father and his God. 



NOTES 

1. 1. curfew. The word is derived from the French and 
means fire-cover. The crowded timber-built towns of the 
Middle Ages were continually menaced by fire, which was 
especially liable to break out while the inhabitants slept. 
The police regulation accordingly arose that at the ringing 
of a bell in the evening all fires on open hearths must be 
covered or banked for the night. This custom was said to 
have been introduced into England by William the Conqueror. 

1. 2. The lowing herd wind. The picture of the slow- 
moving cattle that follow the various cow-paths across the 
pasture toward the barn is clearly indicated. Wind instead 
of winds emphasizes the fact that the herd is a group of 
individuals. 

1. 4. And leaves the world to darkness and to me. When 
the ploughman disappeared in the twilight the poet was left 
alone with the rural scenes and the graveyard about him, 
but presently they too disappeared in the darkness and the 
poem became subjective — a record of a poet's thoughts con- 
cerning the life and death of the simple poor. 

1. 5. Now fades the glimmering landscape. Such pictures 
were favorites with romantic writers. They liked the uncer- 
tain light of evening and the quiet disturbed only by such 
sounds as the blundering May-beetle's buzzing flight and the 
muffled tinkle of distant sheep-bells as the woolly creatures 
sank one by one down to sleep. Especially in keeping with 
romantic setting is the hoot from the church tower of the 
mysterious owl. 

10 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 11 

1. 13. that yew tree. There is still in Stoke-Pogis church- 
yard a great yew tree under which it is said Gray often sat. 

1. 17. The breezy call. The peasants might be roused 
from sleep by the swallows that twittered on the thatched 
roof, or by the crow of the cock, or by the hunter's horn : 
or they might be summoned forth by the mere beauty of 
the new day — the breezy call of morning. 

1. 22. ply. To be busy with. 

1. 23. lisp. Beetles drone ; bells tinkle ; swallows twitter ; 
and children lisp. The poet uses onomatopoeic words ; that 
is words that suggest the sound by imitating it. 

1. 26. glebe. A poetic word for turf or soil. 

1. 27. jocund. Not plodding wearily after a day of labor, 
but refreshed with the night's repose. 

1. 28. bowed. The word presents an image of a tree as it 
begins to fall. 

1. 36. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Parkman 
tells us that in 1579 while the Elegy was a comparatively new 
poem, it was repeated by General Wolfe on the evening before 
he fell in the battle of Quebec. 

" For two full hours the procession of boats, borne on the 
current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars 
were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently 
dark. The general was in one of the foremost boats, and 
near him was a young midshipman, John Robison, afterwards 
professor of natural philosophy in the Universitj^ of Edin- 
burgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a 
low voice, repeated Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard to 
the officers about him. Probably it was to relieve the intense 
strain of his thoughts. Among the rest was the verse which 
his own fate was soon to illustrate, — ■ 

"'The paths of glory lead but to the grave.' 



12 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

' Gentlemen ' he said, as his recital ended, ' I would rather 
have written those lines than take Quebec' " 

1. 39. the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault. The 
wealthy, the noble, and the famous were not buried in the 
churchyard, but within the church where trophies were raised 
in their honor. See Westminster Abbey in Irving's Sketch- 
Book for an account of such memorials. The roof of a 
vault was said to be fretted when it was ornamented with a 
design in relief of lines crossing at right angles. 

1. 41. storied urn. An urn or vase with ornamentation 
that suggests a story or historical account. Milton in II 
Penseroso speaks of storied windows. 

1. 43. Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust. Classi- 
cal taste approved of the personification pf abstractions such 
as, honor, ambition, grandeur, memory, flattery, and knowl- 
edge. This practice, however, was injurious to poetry. The 
ideas expressed in verse should be concrete; far from being 
obscure, they should be such as will make a vivid sensuous 
impression. The romantic poets avoided personified abstrac- 
tions ; they even preferred specific rather than general terms. 
This tendency is evident here in the poet's use of the words 
owl, swallow, ivy, elm, yew, beech, and thorn. 

1. 46. Pregnant with celestial fire. Full of a divine enthu- 
siasm, which might have manifested itself in statecraft by 
swaying the rod of empire, or in poetry by playing upon 
men's memories and emotions until they were aroused to 
ecstasy. 

1. 50. Spoils of Time. What are these spoils? 

1. 52. froze the genial current. Are poverty and poetry 
at odds with one another ? Would not a true poet sing what- 
ever his surroundings? Could there be a mute Milton? 
One would think that Burns would have been mute if a true 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 13 

poet could be. How far can a man control his environment ? 
The view that Gray took of the destiny of the uneducated 
poor may have been scientific, or it may not have been ; but 
it certainly was charitable, and it was far more democratic 
than that taken by previous poets. 

1. 57. Some village Hampden. In 1636 John Hampden 
refused to pay the ship-money tax which Charles I. was 
levying without the authority of Parliament. Concerning 
the little tyrant, see the note on line 37 of The Deserted 
Village. 

When Gray wrote, there was still much unreasonable 
prejudice against Cromwell. 

This stanza originally appeared as follows : — 

"Some village Okto who with dauntless Breast 
The little Tyrant of his fields withstood ; 
Some mute inglorious Tully here may rest ; 
Some Caesar, guiltless of his Country's Blood." 

In the Saturday Review for June 19, 1875, a writer comments 
on the stanzas as follows : — 

" Gray, having first of all put down the names of three 
Romans as illustrations of his meaning, afterwards deliber- 
ately struck them out and put the names of three English- 
men instead. This is a sign of a change in the taste of the 
age, a change with which Gray himself had a good deal to 
do. The deliberate wiping out of the names of Cato, Tully, 
and CsBsar, to put in the names of Hampden, Milton, and 
Cromwell, seems to us so obviously a change for the better 
that there seems to be no room for any doubt about it. It 
is by no means certain that Gray's own contemporaries would 
have thought the matter equally clear. We suspect that 
to many people in his day it must have seemed a daring novelty 
to draw illustrations from English history, especially from 



14 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

parts of English history which, it must be remembered, were 
then a great deal more recent than they are now. To be 
sure, in choosing English illustrations, a poet of Gray's time 
was in rather a hard strait. If he chose illustrations from 
the century or two before his own time, he could only choose 
names which had hardly got free from the strife of recent 
politics. If, in a poem of the nature of the Elegy, he had 
drawn illustrations from earlier times of English history, he 
would have found but few people in his day likely to under- 
stand him. . . . 

" The change which Gray made in this well-known stanza 
is not only an improvement in a particular poem, it is a sign, 
of a general improvement in taste. He first wrote according 
to the vicious taste of an earlier time, and he then changed 
it according to his own better taste. And of that better 
taste he was undoubtedly a prophet to others. Gray's poetry 
must have done a great deal to open men's eyes to the fact that 
they were Englishmen, and that on them, as Englishmen, 
English things had a higher claim than Roman, and that to 
them English examples ought to be more speaking than 
Roman ones. But there is another side of the case not to be 
forgotten. Those who would have regretted the change from 
Cato, TuUy, and Csesar to Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell, 
those who perhaps really did think that the bringing in of 
Hampden, Milton, and Cromwell was a degradation of what 
they would have called the Muse, were certainly not those 
who had the truest knowledge of Cato, Tully, and CsBsar. 
The * classic ' taste from which Gray helped to deliver us 
was a taste which hardly deserves to be called a taste. Par- 
donable perhaps in the first heat of the Renaissance, when 
* classic ' studies and objects had the charm of novelty, it 
had become by his day a mere silly fashion." 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 15 

1. 71. Or heap the shrine of luxury and pride. From the 
time when poetry first began to be produced by individual 
authors until the days of the Romantic Movement poets were 
accustomed to write verse in praise of patrons. Oftentimes 
these patrons in return for fiattery expressed, or for the dis- 
tinction of having their names connected with famous works, 
rewarded the authors with money or remunerative positions. 
As a result many poets sought to make their poems acceptable 
to wealthy and influential patrons by expressing only such 
sentiments as would accord with the views of the powerful 
and the rich. Under such circumstances it is not surprising 
that in poetry the poor and weak had few advocates. With 
the changes that took place in society and public opinion 
in the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, poets also 
changed their views regarding patronage ; Samuel Johnson, 
who was contemporaneous with Gray did his utmost to ob- 
tain intellectual independence for poetry. Gray himself 
never had a patron. Oliver Goldsmith dedicated his Traveller, 
in 1764, to his brother who was passing rich on forty pounds 
a year, and The Deserted Village to his friend Joshua Rey- 
nolds, from whom he could hope to receive no material advan- 
tage. Byron was so utterly opposed to the whole system 
of patronage that in the early part of his career he was unwill- 
ing even to receive from the publisher pay for his copyrights. 
Thus by the time the Romantic Movement had reached its 
climax the system of literary patronage had practically passed 
out of existence. 

1. 72. At this point Gray originally inserted in the poem 

the four following stanzas : — ■ 

"The thoughtless world to majesty may bow, 
Exalt the brave, and idolize success ; 
But more to innocence their safety owe, 

Than pow'r or genius e'er conspired to bless. 



16 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

And thou who mindful of th' unhonour'd dead 
Dost in these notes their artless tale relate, 

By night and lonely contemplation led 
To linger in the gloomy walks of fate : 

Hark, how the sacred calm, that breathes around, 
Bids every fierce tumultuous passion cease : 

In still small accents whispering from the ground, 
A grateful earnest of eternal peace. 

No more with reason and thyself at strife. 
Give anxious cares and endless wishes room ; 

But through the cool sequester'd vale of life 
Pursue the silent tenour of thy doom." 



1. 85. to dumb forgetfulness a prey. The prey of death ; 
that is, about to die. 

1. 90. pious. In the sense of the Latin yius, meaning 
affectionate. 

1. 91. Cf. note on line 43. 

1. 93. For thee. Who is f;peaking now ? Does this 
change injure the unity? Wouhl the poem be better if it 
ended, as originally planned, with the stanzas quoted in the 
note on line 72? 

I. 100. Here originally appeared the following stanza : — 

"Him have we seen the greenwood side along, 

While o'er the heath we hied, our labours done. 
Oft as the woodlark piped her farewell song, 
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun." 

" I rather wonder," says Mason, " that he rejected this 
stanza, as it not only has the same sort of Doric delicacy 
which charms us peculiarly in this part of the poem, but also 
completes the account of his whole day ; whereas, this even- 
ing scene being omitted, we have only his morning walk, and 
his noon-tide repose." 

II. 105-112. These two stanzas are inscribed on a monu- 



ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD 17 

ment erected to Gray's memory near the church at Stoke- 
Pogis. 

1. 109. One morn I missed him on the customed hill. 
Gray himself heard the breezy call of incense-breathing 
morn. He was a lover of nature long before it was fashion- 
able to admire wild and rugged scenery, lakes, waterfalls, 
and mountains. In 1739, fifty j^ears in advance of the times, 
Gray said of the Alps, " Not a precipice, not a torrent, not 
a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry." And in 
17G9, one j^ear before Wordsworth was born, he visited the 
English lakes alone, and wrote back to his friends in the true 
Wordsworthian style of glassy waters " reflecting rocks, 
woods, fields, and inverted tops of mountains," of lakes alive 
with breezes, and of the murmur at night of waterfalls inaudi- 
ble by day. 

1. 115. for thou canst read. The hoary-headed swain 
could not read. 

1. 116. After this line was inserted, in the third edition, 
in March, 1751, the follomng stanza, which was withdrawn 
in 1753. Mason says the poet thought that it made too 
long a pause before the reading of the epitaph. 

"There scattered oft, the earliest of the year, 

By hands unseen, are showers of violets found ; 
The red-breast loves to build, and warble there. 
And little footsteps lightly print the ground." 

L 119. science. Knowledge in general. 
1. 128. bosom. In apposition with abode, line 126. 
Select from the poem lines and stanzas which you would 
Uke to illustrate if you were an artist. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH 

Oliver Goldsmith, whom Thackeray calls the most 
beloved of English writers, was born November 10, 1728, 
in the small village of Pallas, Longford county, Ireland. 
He was the son of the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, a poor 
clergyman, whose character is portrayed in Dr. Primrose 
of The Vicar of Wakefield and in the parson of The 
Deserted Village. At the age of eight he suffered a severe 
attack of smallpox and his face was greatly disfigured. 
In other respects, moreover, he was not at all preposses- 
sing in appearance. After attending several schools at 
which he did not distinguish himself, he entered Trinity 
College, Dublin, in 1744. He assisted in paying his 
expenses by waiting on table and performing janitor 
services, but he was not greatly interested in his studies, 
and was neither contented nor successful. Once, how- 
ever, he gained a prize of thirty shillings, and to celebrate 
the event invited a company of young people to his 
room for a dance, but his tutor suddenly appeared, drove 
out the dancers, and chastized Goldsmith. Deeply 
mortified, he ran away and nearly starved to death, but 
his brother Henry induced him to return, and he was 
graduated in 1749, the lowest on the list. 

18 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 19 

For two years after leaving college, Goldsmith was 
ostensibly fitting himself for church orders, but when he 
presented himself for ordination, because he did not 
fancy the clerical black, he dressed himself in scarlet 
breeches anci was rejected. Next, he thought of emi- 
grating to America, but the ship sailed without him while 
he was enjojdng himself in the neighboring country. 
He went home penniless, but his uncle lent him fifty 
pounds to take him to London to study law. On the 
way he lost the money by gambling and was forced to 
return home. His friends next sent him to Edinburgh 
to study medicine. There for two years he remained 
until the desire for travel seized him, and he went abroad, 
ostensibily to study medicine, but really to ramble over 
Europe as a wandering minstrel. 

On his return he lived in London which became his 
permanent home. He failed to make a living at prac- 
tising medicine or teaching school and gradually en- 
gaged in hack work in literature. After writing his 
Citizen of the World (1760-1761), he made the acquaint- 
ance of Johnson and became a member of the famous 
Literary Club. He was recognized as one of the fore- 
most poets of England on publishing The Traveller 
in 1764. 

This date marks the change in his career. Hitherto 
his life had been a long and bitter struggle with poverty. 
He had scarcely been able to provide himself with the 
bare necessities of existence ; but from now on his finan- 
cial difficulties arose, not from insufficient income, but 
from lack of thrift. He was greatly ridiculed by his utili- 
tarian friends for his lack of common-sense. The 
needy, whether worthy or unworthy, never sought his 



20 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

sympathy in vain. Taking no thought for the morrow 
he spent his last cent or went into debt if thereby he 
could relieve suffering. Even when a poor student in 
college he gave the blankets of his bed to a homeless 
woman who had five children. He had a childish 
love of bright colors and foolishly sought to redeem 
the deficiencies of his ill-favored person by arraying 
himself in suits of purple, velvet or other gorgeous 
finery. 

His lack of practical ability is shown in a story told 
by Boswell. He says, Johnson one morning received 
a message that Goldsmith was in deep trouble and was 
about to be arrested for debt by his landlady. Johnson 
sent a guinea and as soon as he was dressed went at 
once to Goldsmith's room where he found that the 
guinea was already changed and that the impecunious 
author was about to indulge in a bottle of Madeira. 
Johnson thrust the cork into the bottle and asked 
Goldsmith if he knew of any means whereby he might 
be extricated from his unfortunate position. The 
latter mentioned a novel that was ready for the 
press. Johnson took the manuscript and, telling the 
landlady that he would soon return, sold it to a 
bookseller for sixty pounds. As Goldsmith discharged 
his rent he did not fail to scold his landlady roundly 
for having used him so ill. 

The book which Johnson sold was The Vicar of Wake- 
field, which appeared in 1766. It is the first novel in 
English to present an attractive picture of home life; 
it has been translated into many languages and has 
probably done more than any of Goldsmith's other 
works to keep alive his fame. In 1770 The Deserted 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 21 

Village appeared, and in 1773 the drama She Stoops To 
Conquer, his last important work. Goldsmith died on 
the 4th of April, 1774, and was mourned by the unfor- 
tunate and by all true lovers of literature. 

In Goldsmith's Enquiry into the Present State of Polite 
Learning, 1759, as well as in other writings, he acknowl- 
edged his allegiance to the classical school. In outward 
form his works followed classical models, but the spirit 
was romantic. He was a simple lover of nature and a 
champion of the oppressed poor. There was no seven- 
teenth century satire in his treatment of the vices of 
men; on the other hand, his words pulsate with pity for 
the weak and erring. Although he maintained the in- 
tellectual dogmas of the classical school, he was uncon- 
sciously one of the important forces in the earlier years 
of the Romantic Movement. 

Bibliography 

Essays on the Poets, De Quince}^ 

Essays (Vol. 4), Macaulay. The Macmillan Co. 

Goldsmith's Miscellaneous Works, edited by Masson. The 

Macmillan Co. 
Homes and Haunts of the Poets, Howitt. 
Life and Adventures of Goldsmith, Forster. 
Life of Goldsmith, William Black. The Macmillan Co. 
Life of Goldsmith, Austin Dobson, 

Life of Goldsmith, Washington Irving. The Macmillan Co. 
The Life of Johnson, James Boswell, The Macmillan Co. 
Specimens of the Poets, Thomas Campbell. 
The English Humorists, Thackeray. The Macmillan Co. 



22 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 

After ten years spent in composition and revision this 
poem was given to the public on May 26, 1770, in quarto 
form. ''This day at twelve," announced The Public 
Advertiser, ''will be published, price two shillings, The 
Deserted Village, a Poem by Dr. Goldsmith, Printed for 
W. Griffin, at Garrick's Head in Catherine Street, 
Strand." The immediate success that attended the 
publication was no doubt due partly to the didactic 
and morahzing tone which then w^as in accordance with 
the popular taste. Five editions were called for within 
a year. Goldsmith's object was to set forth the evils 
that result from the rise of luxury and the decay of the 
peasantry. The poem is valued to-day, not for any eco- 
nomic theories it presents, but because of its pastoral 
atmosphere, its sympathy with human suffering and en- 
joyment, and its touching simplicity. 



DEDICATION 

TO SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS 

Dear Sir, 

I can have no expectations in an address of this kind, 
either to add to your reputation, or to estal)lish my 
own. You can gain nothing from my admiration, 
as I am ignorant of that art in which you are said to 
excel ; and I may lose much by the severity of your 
judgment, as few have a juster taste in poetry than 
you. Setting interest therefore aside, to which I never 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 23 

paid much attention, I must be indulged at present 
in following- my affections. The only dedication I 
ever made was to my brother, because I loved him 
better than most other men. He is since dead. Per- 
mit me to inscribe this Poem to you. 

How far you may be pleased with the versification 
and micre mechanical parts of this attempt, I do not 
pretend to enquire; but I know you will object (and 
indeed several of our best and wisest friends concur 
in the opinion) that the depopulation it deplores is 
nowhere to be seen, and the disorders it laments are 
only to be found in the poet's own imagination. To 
this I can scarcely make any other answer than that 
I sincerely believe what I have written; that I have 
taken all possible pains, in my country excursions, for 
these four or five years past, to be certain of what 
I allege ; and that all my views and enquiries have led 
me to believe those miseries real, which I here attempt 
to chsplay. But this is not the place to enter into an 
enquiry, whether the country be depopulating, or not; 
the discussion would take up much room, and I should 
prove myself, at best, an indifferent politician, to tire 
the reader with a long preface, when I want his unfa- 
tigued attention to a long poem. 

In regretting the depopulation of the country, I 
inveigh against the increase of our luxuries; and here 
also I expect the shout of modern politicians against 
me. For twenty or thirty years past, it has been the 
fashion to consider luxury as one of the greatest na- 
tional advantages ; and all the wisdom of antiquity in 
that particular, as erroneous. Still, however, I must re- 
main a professed ancient on that head, and continue 



24 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

to think those luxuries prejudicial to states, by which 
so man}^ vices are introduced, and so many kingdoms 
have been undone. Indeed so much has been poured 
out of late on the other side of the question, that, merely 
for the sake of novelty and variety, one would sometimes 
wish to be in the right. 

I am. Dear Sir, 
Your sincere friend, and ardent admirer, 

Oliver Goldsmith. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 

Sweet Auburn° ! loveliest village of the plain ; 

Where health and plenty cheer'd the labouring swain, 

Where smiling spring° its earliest visit paid, 

And parting" summer's lingering blooms delay'd : 

Dear lovely bowers° of innocence and ease, 5 

Seats of my youth, ° when every sport could please, 

How often have I loiter'd o'er thy green,° 

Where humble happiness endear'd each scene ! 

How often have I paus'd on every charm. 

The shelter'd cot, the cultivated farm, lo 

The never-failing brook, the busy mill. 

The decent° church that topt the neighbouring hill,° 

The hawthorn" bush, with seats beneath the shade 

For talking age and whisperhig lovers made ! 

How often have I blest the coming day,° 15 

When toil remitting lent its turn to play, 

And all the village train," from labour free. 

Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree. 



d 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 25 

While mai\v a pastime circled in the shade, 

The young contending as the old survey'd ; 20 

And many a gambol frolick'd o'er the ground, 

And sleights of art and feats of strength went round. 

And still, as each repeated pleasure tir'd, 

Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspir'd ; 

The dancing pair that simply sought renown 25 

By holding out to tire each other down; 

The swain mistrustless of his smutted face. 

While secret laughter titter'd° round the place ; 

The bashful virgin's side-long looks of love, 29 

The matron's glance that would those looks reprove. 

These were thy charms, sweet village ! sports like these, 

With sweet succession, taught even toil to please : 

These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed : 

These were thy charms, but all these charms are fled. 

Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, 35 

Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn ; 
Amidst thy bowers the tj^rant's hand° is seen, 
And desolation saddens all thy green : 
One only master grasps the whole domain. 
And half a tillage" stints thy smiling plain. 40 

No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, 
But, chok'd with sedges,° works its weedy way ; 
Along thy glades, a solitary guest. 
The hollow-sounding bittern° guards its nest ; 
Amidst thy desert-walks the lapwing flies, 45 

And tires their echoes with unvaried cries ; 
Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, 
And the long grass o'ertops the mouldering wall ; 
And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand. 
Far, far away thy children leave the land. 50 



26 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay ; 
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade ; 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made : 
But a bold peasantry,° their country's pride, 55 

When once destroy 'd, can never be supplied. 

A time there was, ere England's griefs began. 
When every rood° of ground maintain'd its man ; 
For him light labour spread her wholesome store, 
Just gave what life recjuirM, but gave no more : 60 

His best companions, innocence and health ; 
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. ° 

But times are alter'd ; trade's unfeeling train 
Usurp the land and dispossess the swain ; 
Along the lawn, where scatter'd hamlets rose, 65 

Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose,° 
And every want to opulence allied, 
And every pang that folly pays to pride. 
These gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, 
Those calm desires that ask'd but little room, ^ 70 

Those healthful sports that grac'cl the peaceful scene, 
Liv'd in each look, and brighten'd all the green ; 
These, far departing, seek a kinder shore. 
And rural mirth and manners are no more. 

Sweet Auburn ! parent of the blissful hour, 75 

Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant's power. 
Here, as I take my solitary rounds 
Amidst thy tangling walks and ruin'd grounds, 
And, many a year elaps'd, return to view 
Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, 80 
Remembrance wakes with all her busy train. 
Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. 



THE DESERTED VILLuiGE 27 

In all my wanderings" round this world of care, 
In all my griefs — and God has given ray share — 
I still had hopes, ° my latest hours to crown, 85 

Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down ; 
To husband out life's taper at the close, 
And keep the flame from wasting by repose : 
I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, 
Amidst the swains to show my book-learn' d skill, 90 
Around my fire an evening group to draw, 
And tell of all I felt,° and all I saw; 
And, as an hare whom hounds and horns pursue 
Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 
I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 95 

Here to return — and die at home at last. 

O blest retirement, friend to life's decline. 
Retreats from care, that never must° be mine, 
How happy he who crowns in shades hke these . 
A youth of labour with an age of ease ; lOO 

Who quits a world where strong temptations try, 
And, since 'tis hard to combat, learns to fly ! 
For him no wretches, ° born to work and weep, 
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep ; 
No surly porter stands in guilty° state, 105 

To spurn imploring famine from the gate ; 
But on he moves to meet his latter end. 
Angels around befriending virtue's friend, ° 
Bends to the grave with unperceiv'd decay. 
While resignation" gently slopes the Vv'ay ; no 

And, all his prospects brightening to the last, 
His heaven commences ere the world be past ! 

Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 



28 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

There, as I passed with careless steps and slow, ii5 

The rniDgling notes came soften'd from below ; 

The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung. 

The sober herd that low'd to meet their young. 

The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 

The playful children just let loose from school, 120 

The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind, 

And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind ; — 

These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, 

And fill'd each pause the nightingale" had made. 

But now the sounds of population fail, 125 

No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale,° 

No busy steps the grass-grown footway tread, 

For all the bloomy flush of life is fled. 

All but yon widow'd, solitary thing, 

That feebly bends beside the plashy spring : 130 

She, wretched maiden, forc'd in age, for bread, 

To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread, 

To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn, 

To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn ; 

She only left of all the harmless train, 135 

The sad historian of the pensive plain ! 

Near yonder copse, where once the garden smil'd. 
And still where many a garden-flower grows wild ; 
There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, 
The village preacher's" modest mansion rose. 140 

A man he was to all the country dear. 
And passing rich with forty pounds a year° ; 
Remote from towns he ran his godly race. 
Nor e'er had chang'd, nor wish'd to change his place ; 
Unpractis'd he to fawn, or seek for power, 145 

By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour; 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 29 

Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize, 
More skill'd to raise the wretched than to rise. 
His house was known to all the vagrant train; 
Pie chid their wanderings but relieved their pain : 150 
The long remember'd beggar° was his guest, 
Whose beard descending swept his aged breast ; 
The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud, 
Claim'd kindred° there, and had his claims allowed ; 
The broken soldier, ° kindly bade to stay, 155 

Sat by his fire, and talk'd the night away, 
Wept o'er his wounds or, tales of sorrow done, 
Shoulder'cl his crutch and show'd how fields were won. 
Pleas'd with his guests, the good man learn'd to glow. 
And quite forgot their vices in their woe ; IGO 

Careless their merits or their faults to scan. 
His pity gave ere charity began. 

Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride. 
And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side° ; 
But in his duty prompt at every call, 165 

He watch'd and wept, he pray'd and felt for all ; 
And, as a bird each fond endearment tries 
To tempt its new-fledg'd offspring to the skies. 
He tried each art, reprov'd each dull delay, 
Allur'd to brighter worlds, and led the way. 170 

Beside the bed where parting life was laid. 
And sorrow, guilt, and pain by turns dismay'd, 
The reverend champion stood ; at his control 
Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul ; 
Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise 175 
And his last faltering accents whisper'd praise. 

At church, with meek and unaffected grace, 
His looks adorn' d the venerable place ; 



30 PGEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Truth from his Hps prevail' d with double sway, 

And fools, who came to scoff, remaiii'd to pray. iso 

The service past, around the pious man, 

With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran ; 

Even children follow'd with endearing wile, 

And pluck'd his gown to share the good man's smile. 

His ready smile a parent's warmth exprest ; 1S5 

Their welfare pleas'd him, and their cares clistrest : 

To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, 

But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven : 

As some tali cliff that lifts its awful form, 189 

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, 

Tho' round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, 

Eternal sunshine settles on its head. 

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, 
With blossom' d furze unprofitably gay. 
There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule, 195 

The village master° taught his little school. 
A man severe he was, and stern to view ; 
I knew him well, and every truant knew : 
Well had the boding tremblers learn' d to trace 
The day's disasters in his morning face ; 200 

Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee 
At all his jokes, for many a joke had he ; 
Full well the busy whisper, circling round, 
Convey'd the dismal tidings when he frown'd. 
Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, 205 

The love he bore to learning was in fault; 
The village all declar'd how much he knew : 
'Twas certain he could write and cipher too ; 
Lands he could measure, terms and tides° presage, 
And even the story ran that he could gauge : 210 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 31 

In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill, 

For, even tho' vanquish'd, he could argue still ; 

While words of learned length and thundering sound 

Amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around ; 

And still they gaz'd, and still the wonder grew, 215 

That one small head could carry all he knew. 

But past is all his fame ; the very spot 
Where many a time he triumph'd is forgot. 
Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high. 
Where once the sign-post° caught the passing eye, 220 
Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspir'd, 
Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retir'd. 
Where village statesmen talk'd with looks profound. 
And news much older than their ale went round. 
Imagination fondly stoops to trace 225 

The parlour splendours of that festive place : 
The white-wash'd wall, the nicely sanded floor, 
The varnish'd clock that click'd behind the door ; 
The chest contrived a double debt to pay, 
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day ; 230 

The pictures plac'd for ornament and use,° 
The twelve good rules,° the royal game of goose°; 
The hearth, except when winter chill'd the day, 
With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay ; 
While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show, 235 

Ranged o'er the chimney, glisten'd in a row. 

Vain transitory splendours ! could not all 
Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall ? 
Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart 
An hour's importance to the poor man's heart.° 240 

Thither no more the peasant shall repair 
To sweet oblivion of his daily care ; 



32 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

No more the farmer's news, the barber's tale, 
No more the wood-man's ballad shall prevail ; 
No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, 
Relax his ponderous strength, ° and lean to hear; 
The host himself no longer shall be found 
Careful to see the mantling bliss go round ; 
Nor the coy maid; half willing to be prest, 
Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest. 

Yes ! let the rich deride, the proud disdain, 
These simple blessings of the lowly train ; 
To me more dear, congenial to my heart, 
One native charm, ° than all the gloss of art ; 
Spontaneous joys, where nature has its play, 
The soul adopts, and owns their first-born sway ; 
Lightly they frolic o'er the vacant mind, 
Unenvied, unmolested, unconfin'd. 
But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade, 
With all the freaks of wanton wealth arraj^'d — 
In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, 
The toiling pleasure sickens into pain ; 
And, even while fashion's brightest arts decoy, 
The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy. 

Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey 
The rich man's joys increase, the poor's decay,° 
'Tis yours to judge how wide the limits stand 
Between a splendid and an happy land. 
Proud swells the tide° with loads of freighted ore. 
And shouting folly hails them from her shore; 
Hoards even beyond the miser's wish abound. 
And rich men flock from all the world around ; 
Yet count our gains ; this wealth is but a name 
That leaves our useful products still the same. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 33 

Not SO the loss. The man of wealth and pride 275 

Takes up a space that many poor supphed° ; 

Space for his lake, his park's extended bounds, 

Space for his horses, equipage, and hounds : 

The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth 

Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth ; 

His seat, where solitary sports are seen, 2Si 

Indignant spurns the cottage from the green : 

Around the world each needful product flies, 

For all the luxuries the world supplies ; 

While thus the land, adorn'd for pleasure, all 286 

In barren splendor feebly waits the fall. 

As some fair female unadorn'd and plain, 
Secure to please while youth confirms her reign. 
Slights every borrow'd charm that dress supplies, 
Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes ; 290 

But when those charms are past, for charms are frail, 
When time advances, and when lovers fail. 
She then shines forth, solicitous to bless, 
In all the glaring impotence of dress. 
Thus fares the land, by luxury betray'd : 295 

In nature's simplest charms at first array'd. 
But verging to decline, its splendours rise ; 
Its vistas strike, ° its palaces surprise : 
While, scourg'd by famine from the smiling land, 
The mournful peasant leads his humble band, 300 

And while he sinks, without one arm to save, 
The country blooms — a garden, and a grave. 

Where then, ah! where shall poverty reside, 
To 'scape the pressure of contiguous pride ? 
If to some common's fenceless limits straj^'d 305 

He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, 



34 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, 
And even the bare-worn common is denied. 

If to the city sped — what waits him there ? 
To see profusion that he must not share ; 3io 

To see ten thousand baneful arts combin'd 
To pamper luxury and thin mankind ; 
To see those joys the sons of pleasure know 
Extorted from his fellow-creature's woe. 
Here while the courtier glitters in brocade, 315 

There the pale artist plies the sickly trade ; 
Here, while the proud their long-drawn pomps display, 
There, the black gibbet° glooms beside the way. 
The dome° where pleasure holds her midnight reign 
Here, richly deckt, admits the gorgeous train : 320 

Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square. 
The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare. 
Sure scenes like these no troubles e'er annoy ! 
Sure these denote one universal joy! 321 

Are these thy serious thoughts ? — Ah, turn thine eyes 
Where the poor houseless shivering female lies. 
She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest. 
Has wept at tales of innocence distrest ; 
Her modest looks the cottage might adorn, 
Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn : 330 
Now lost to all, — her friends, her virtue fled, — 
Near her betrayer's door she lays her head. 
And, pinched with cold, and shrinking from the shower. 
With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour. 
When idly first, ambitious of the town, 335 

She left her wheel, and robes of country brown. 

Do thine, sweet Auburn, — thine the loveliest train, — 
Do thy fair tribes participate her pain ? 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 35 

Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, 

At proud men's doors they ask a little bread. 340 

Ah, no! To distant climes, a dreary scene 
Where half the convex world intrudes between, 
Through torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, 
Where wild Altama° murmurs to their woe. 
Far different there from all that charm'd before 345 
The various terrors of that horrid shore ; 
Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, 
And fiercely shed intolerable day ; 
Those matted woods, where birds forget to sing, 
But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling ; 350 

Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crown'd. 
Where the dark scorpion gathers death around ; 
Where at each step the stranger fears to wake 
The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake ; 
Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey, 355 

And savage men more murderous still than they; 
While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies. 
Mingling the ravag'd landscape with the skies. 
Far different these from every former scene. 
The cooling brook, the grassy-vested green, 360 

The breezy covert of the warbling grove. 
That only shelter'd thefts of harmless love. 

Good Heaven ! What sorrows gloom'd that parting 
day, 
That caird them from their native walks away ; 
When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, 365 

Hung round the bowers, and fondly look'd their 

last. 
And took a long farewell, and wish'd in vain 
For seats like these beyond the western main, 



36 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

And shuddering still to face the distant deep, 

Return'd and wept, and still return'd to weep. 370 

The good old sire the first prepared to go 

To new-found worlds, and wept for others' woe ; 

But for himself, in conscious virtue brave, 

He only wish'd for worlds beyond the grave. 

His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears, 375 

The fond companion of his helpless years, 

Silent went next, neglectful of her charms, 

And left a lover's for a father's arms. 

With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, 

And blest the cot where every pleasure rose, 380 

And kiss'd her thoughtless babes with many a tear, 

And clasp'd them close, in sorrow doubly dear. 

Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief 

In all the silent manliness of grief. 

O luxury ! thou curst by Heaven's decree, 385 

How ill exchang'd are things like these for thee ! 
How do thy potions, with insidious joy, 
Diffuse their pleasure only to destroy ! 
Kingdoms by thee, to sickly greatness grown, 
Boast of a florid vigour not their own. 390 

At every draught more large and large they grow, 
A bloated mass of rank, unwieldy woe ; 
Till sapp'd their strength, and every part unsound, 
Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round. 

Even now the devastation is begun, 395 

And half the business of destruction done ; 
Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, 
I see the rural virtues leave the land. 
Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads" the sail, 
That idly waiting flaps with every gale, 400 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 37 

Downward they move, a melancholy band, 

Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. 

Contented toil, and hospitable care, 

And kind connuloial tenderness, are there ; 

And piety with wishes plac'd above, 405 

And steady loyalty, and faithful love. 

And thou, sweet poetry, thou loveliest maid, 

Still first to fly where sensual joys invade ; 

Unfit in these degenerate times of shame 

To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame ; 410 

Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried, 

My shame in crowds, my solitary pride ; 

Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe,° 

That found'st me poor at first, and keep'st me so ; 

Thou guide by which the nobler arts excel, 415 

Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well ! 

Farewell, and O ! where'er thy voice be tried. 

On Torno's cliffs, or Pambamarca's side,° 

Whether where equinoctial fervours glow, 

Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, 420 

Still let thy voice, prevailing over time. 

Redress the rigours of the inclement clime ; 

Aid slighted truth° with thy persuasive strain ; 

Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain ; 

Teach him, that states of native strength possest, 425 

Tho' very poor, may still be very blest ; 

That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,° 

As ocean sweeps the labour'd mole away ; 

While self-dependent power can time defy. 

As rocks resist the billows and the skv. 430 



NOTES 

1. 1. Auburn. This name was suggested to Goldsmith 
by his friend Langton. The place seems to be entirely im- 
aginary, although Lissoy, a hamlet in the central part of 
Ireland, resembled in many respects the village described 
in the poem. The ruins of the house in which Goldsmith's 
father lived at Lissoy remained for many years an object of 
interest. 

1. 3. smiling spring, etc. Many poets have expressed 
such a wish concerning localities that have been associated 
with the joys and sorrows of youth. Burns wrote of the region 
about Montgomery Castle, where he took his last farewell 
of Highland Mary, " There simmer first unfauld her robes, 
and there the langest tarry." 

1. 4. parting. Departing. 

1. 5. bowers. Goldsmith uses the word often in the 
sense of a rustic cottage or a home. Cooke, a contemporary 
of Goldsmith, says that lines 5-15 constituted Goldsmith's 
second morning's work. It was the poet's method to write 
out in prose the ideas that occurred to him and later to versify 
them and revise. Ten lines of poetry he considered a good 
day's labor. Goldsmith worked on the poem more or less 
steadily for two years before it was published. 

1. 6. Seats of my youth. The abode or dwelling-place 
of my boyhood. The Rev. Charles Goldsmith removed to 
Lissoy when his son, Oliver, was but two years of age. The 
boy continued to reside in the outskirts of that village until 
he began to prepare for the university. 

38 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 39 

1. 7. green. The word is still in use in some villages of 
New England and New York as the name for a public play- 
ground or park. 

1. 12. decent. Comely. Goldsmith used many words in 
a sense that preserved the meaning of the original Latin. 
Such was the practice of the English classical school of poets 
whose diction Goldsmith followed closely. Notice among 
other words the poet's use of secure, fluctuate, seats, train, and 
participate. 

1. 12. church that topt the neighbouring hill. The custom 
of placing churches on the tops of hills was carried to an 
extreme in the early days of New England. 

1. 13. hawthorn. The corresponding tree in America 
is called the thornapple. 

1. 15. the coming day. A holiday. 

1. 17. train. The word means practically a procession 
of people. Goldsmith liked the word because it helps to 
suggest to the reader the picture of the long-drawn line of 
villagers as they entered upon the green. In this connection 
notice " led up " and " circled " in the following lines. There 
are few passages in English poetry more picturesque than this. 

1. 28. tittered. Goldsmith is not content with bringing 
pictures before the readers' eyes. He also seeks for words 
that suggest auditory images. Notice lines 44, 46, 113-126, 
etc. 

1. 37. the tyrant's hand. General Robert Napier re- 
turned from Spain, where he had made a fortune, and pur- 
chased estates near Lissoy until he had a domain nine miles 
in circumference. This he enclosed, expelling therefrom 
many peasants who formerly had been tenants upon the 
land. Unable to secure a proper maintenance the former 
tenants rose, on the death of the general, and pillaged the 



40 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

estate. It is possible that Goldsmith had this particular 
case in mind, but unfortunately such evictions were not rare 
at this time even in England. 

1. 40. half a tillage. Part of the land had been set aside 
as a game preserve and the remainder was not so carefully 
tilled as when it was divided into small portions, each culti- 
vated by a tenant for his own profit. 

1. 42. choked with sedges. What changed the brook? 
Had the tyrant constructed a lake or a retreat for his game? 
Or had the stream choked from neglect after the mill was 
closed ? 

1. 44. hollow-sounding bittern. In his History of Ani- 
mated Nature Goldsmith wrote as follows : — 

" Those who walked in an evening by the sedgy sides of 
unfrequented rivers must remember a variety of notes from 
different waterfowl : the loud scream of the wild goose, the 
croaking of the mallard, the whining of the lapwing, and the 
tremulous neighing of the jacksnipe. But of all those sounds 
there is none so dismally hollow as the booming of the bittern. 
It is impossible for words to give those who have not heard 
this evening-call an adequate idea of its solemnity. It is 
like the interrupted bellowing of a bull, but hollower and 
louder, and is heard at a mile's distance, as if issuing from 
some formidable being that resided at the bottom of its 
waters. 

" I remember in the place where I was a boy with what terror 
this bird's note affected the whole village ; they considered it 
as the presage of some sad event, and generally found or 
made one to succeed it." 

The presence of the waterfowl is given by Goldsmith as 
evidence of charms withdrawn. Evidence of a decreased 
population it certainly is, but Wordsworth and Byron a few 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 41 

years later would have found the scene no less charming than 
if the mill were still busily humming and the laughter re- 
echoing. To be sure Goldsmith's theme now is not the 
beauties of nature, but rather the welfare of the state ; and 
no one can deny that a population of thrifty peasants is 
better for the state than a population of bitterns. Never- 
theless, Goldsmith's use of these details as instances of de- 
parted charms is evidence to us that his love for nature is 
not romantic, but is such as was characteristic of the classical 
school. Macaulay says in his History of England, Chapter 
XIII., " Goldsmith was one of the very few Saxons who, 
more than a century ago, ventured to explore the Highlands. 
He was disgusted by the hideous wilderness, and declared 
that he greatly preferred the charming country round Ley den, 
the vast expanse of verdant meadow, and the villas with their 
statues and grottos, trim flower beds and rectilinear avenues." 

1. 55. But a bold peasantry, etc. Could thrifty settlers 
and immigrants fill the place which Goldsmith conceives as 
occupied by the bold peasantry ? 

1. 58. rood. The fourth part of an acre. 

1. G2. ignorance of wealth. Then the laborer's parish 
was practically his prison. If he wandered away and re- 
quired temporary assistance, he was returned to his home. 
Few laborers could read. The modern workingman ob- 
viously cannot avail himself of the poet's " best riches." 

1. 66. Unwieldy wealth and cumbrous pomp repose. 
The use of such personified abstractions as wealth and pomp 
is another practice that Goldsmith inherited from the classical 
poets. Cf. also 1. 3, spring ; 1. 16, toil ; 1. 59, labour ; 1. 61, inno- 
cence ; 1. 63. trade ; 1. 68, folly, etc. Notice also how prone 
such a style is to pass into absurdity as in lines 69-73, where 
the gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom are said to seek 



42 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

a kinder shore. Let us be careful, nevertheless, not to regard 
Goldsmith as a classical poet merely because many of the 
external characteristics of his style are classical ; the spirit 
of his poetry is romantic. The object of The Deserted Vil- 
lage is to depict the happy life of the simple villagers and to 
defend the poor and weak from the oppression of the rich 
and powerful. 

1. 83. wanderings. No doubt Goldsmith had in mind 
his pedestrian trip through Europe and those pitiful early 
days in London. 

1. 85. I still had hopes. Still does not mean yet, but is 
used in the older sense of " continually," " all the while." 
The second repetition of / still had hopes brings the paragraph 
to a conclusion in a climax. 

1. 92. I felt. These verses are alive with personal feeling 
of a sort unknown to the work of Pope and Dryden. The 
memory of his boyhood scenes and friends had been through 
Goldsmith's life a perpetual benediction. He wrote of his 
individual experiences and hopes, but with so sincere feeling 
that his lines seem to express for all readers the eternal pathos 
of lost youth and the long ago. 

1. 98. must. Instead of can, because the village was de- 
stroyed in accordance with the will of " the tyrant " and 
not by accident. 

1. 103. wretches. Goldsmith seems to condemn trade 
in general and to believe that laborers should engage only 
in agricultural pursuits. The poet might well have been 
allied with Sir Roger de Coverly in his famous argument 
with Sir Andrew. See the Spectator, No. 174. 

1. 105. guilty. This word certainly suggests democratic 
principles. 

1. 108. Angels around befriending virtue's friend. When 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 43 

Goldsmith died, not angels, but the afflicted, the infirm, and 
the needy, men and women, poor objects of his charity hung 
weeping about the stairs to his apartment. 

1. 110. resignation. Sir Joshua Reynolds in appreciation 
of the poet's compliment in dedicating to him The Deserted 
Village, painted a picture founded on this passage. He 
named it Resignation and dedicated an engraving of the 
painting to Goldsmith. 

1. 126. No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale. 
Matthew Arnold says of this line : " There is exactly the 
poetic diction of our prose century : rhetorical, ornate, and, 
poeticall}^, quite false." 

1. 140. The village preacher. In speaking of the death 
of the poet's brother Henry, Irving says : "To the tender 
and melancholy recollections of his early days awakened by 
the death of this loved companion of his childhood we may 
attribute some of the most heartfelt passages in The Deserted 
Village. Much of that poem we are told was composed this 
summer, in the course of solitary strolls about the green lanes 
and beautifully rural scenes of the neighborhood ; and thus 
much of the softness and sweetness of English landscape 
became blended with the ruder features of Lissoy. It was 
in these lonely and subdued moments, when tender regret 
was half mingled with self-upbraiding, that he poured forth 
the homage of the heart rendered as it were at the grave of 
his brother. The picture of the village pastor in this poem, 
which, we have already hinted, was taken in part from the 
character of his father, embodied likewise the recollections 
of his brother Henry ; for the natures of the father and son 
seem to have been identical." 

1. 142. passing rich with forty pounds a year. Passing 
means surpassingly. This was Henry Goldsmith's income, 



44 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

and it was certainly much larger than that of most of the 
peasantry. We can therefore form an estimate of the 
" plenty " amid which the peasants lived. The charms of 
Auburn, as recalled by the poet, were due to pleasures other 
than those of luxury. 

1. 151. The long-remembered beggar. Of ten remembered 
with alms. 

1. 154. Claimed kindred. Was he a cousin or some rela- 
tive? Is not kindred used in another sense? 

1. 155. The broken soldier. Broken in health. 

1. 158. Shouldered his crutch and showed how fields 
were won. One of the most picturesque lines. 

1. 164. And e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side. So did 
the poet's ; and one of these failings with which he was charged 
was that he quite forgot other men's failings in their woes. 

1. 196. The village master. This is thought to refer to 
Thomas Byrne, who became Goldsmith's teacher when the 
boy was six years of age. Byrne had served abroad in the 
wars of Queen Anne's time and had a great many stories 
to tell of his adventures in Spain. He was moreover of a 
romantic turn of mind, and like Ichabod Crane was exceed- 
ingly superstitious. Under his tuition Goldsmith became 
deeply versed in fairy tales. Also from this master, Gold- 
smith caught a disposition to write poetry. Some of the 
verses that he wrote on scraps of paper his mother read with 
delight, and concluded, while he was yet of tender years, that 
her son was to be a genius and a poet. 

1. 209. terms and tides. This refers to the calendars of 
churches, schools, and courts. 

1. 220. sign-post. The name and symbol of an inn was 
often affixed to a post beside the highway. Cf. Ri-p Van 
Winkle and The Spectator, No. 122. 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 45 

1. 231. use. Perhaps they were used to cover holes in 
the wall. 

1. 232. The twelve good rules. These were found in 
most inns, and according to Goldsmith were originally framed 
by Charles I. They were as follows: 1. Urge no healths ; 
2. Profane no divine ordinances ; 3. Touch no state matters ; 
4. Reveal no secrets ; 5. Pick no quarrels ; 6. Make no com- 
parisons ; 7. Maintain no ill opinions ; 8. Keep no bad 
company ; 9. Encourage no vice ; 10. Make no long meals ; 
11. Repeat no grievances; 12. Lay no wagers. 

1. 232. The royal game of goose. A popular game played 
with dice over a board on which was a representation of a 
goose. 

1. 246. Relax his ponderous strength. Note how the 
movement of the verse is in harmony with the idea? 

1. 254. One native charm. Like Rousseau, he seems to 
wish for a return to nature and the simple life. 

1. 266. The rich man's power increase, the poor's decay. 
What is the tendency to-day ? Goldsmith was wrong as re- 
gards his own time. 

1. 269. Proud swells the tide. " The idea apparently 
is that while more money comes into the country, it is received 
in return for necessaries, some of which are needed for home 
use. As the money thus obtained goes to increase the luxury 
of the rich, it does not add to the substantial prosperity of 
the community as a whole. The actual product of the neces- 
saries of life remain the same ; and the rich man uses his 
superabundant v/ealth to encroach on the lands that once 
supplied the needs of the poor." — Pancoast. 

1. 276. Takes up a place that many poor supplied. " It 
is a melancholy thing to stand alone in one's country," 
said the Lord Leicester who built Holkham, when com- 



46 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

pliraented on the completion of that princely dwelling. " I 
look around — not a house is to be seen but mine. I am 
the giant of Gianteastle, and I have eat up all my neigh- 
bors." FORSTER. 

1. 298. Its vistas strike. The landscape gardener has 
secured beautiful effects on the rich man's estate. 

1. 318. the black gibbet. They had to steal to live. 

1. 319. dome. Here it means house or palace. 

1. 344. wild Altama. The Altamaha River in Georgia. 
In the following passage, certainly, Goldsmith does not present 
a romantic view of the emigrant's lot. We should have 
thought, in spite of the poet's classical training, that the 
strangeness, the luxuriance, and the mystery of the New 
World would have found some expression in his verse. Cf. 
Tennyson's description in Enoch Arden of a tropical isle : — 

"The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns 
And winding ghides high up like ways to Heaven, 
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, 
The lightning flash of insect and of bird, 
The lustre of the long convolvuluses 
That coiled around the stately stems, and ran 
Even ta the limit of the land, the glows 
And glories of the broad belt of the world 



The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, 
The league-long roller thundering on the reef. 
The moving whisper of huge trees that branched 
And blossomed in the zenith, 

The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts, 

Among the palms and ferns, and precipices ; 

The blaze upon the waters to the east ; 

The blaze upon his island overhead ; 

The blaze upon the waters to the west ; 

Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, 

The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again 

The scarlet shafts of sunrise." 



THE DESERTED VILLAGE 47 

1. 399. Where yon anchoring vessel spreads. Goldsmith 
doubtless had in mind one of his own experiences when he 
wrote of the emigrants and penned these lines. 

1. 413. Thou source of all my bliss and all my woe. Forster 
says Goldsmith once remarked to a friend : "I cannot afford 
to court the draggle-tail muses, they would let me starve; 
but by other labors I can make shift to eat and drink and have 
good clothes." Goldsmith never flattered a patron in order to 
secure material advantage from his poetry. 

1. 418. Torno's cliffs or Pambamarca's side. Lake 
Tarnea is in the northern part of Sweden. Pambamarca 
is a peak of the Andes near Quito. 

1. 423. Aid slighted truth. Goldsmith's verse never 
failed to do that. His attitude toward society was romantic, 
although his tendency to moralize was classical. 

1. 427. Boswell says that the last four lines were added by 
Johnson, who thought that the poem as completed by Gold- 
smith ended too tamely. Is The Deserted Village merely a 
rimed essay, or is it a real poem ? 



CANTO FOUR OF CHILDE HAROLD'S 
PILGRIMAGE AND THE PRISONER OF 
CHILLON 

GEORGE GORDON BYRON 

THE LIFE OF BYRON 

Byron is the most picturesque figure in the history of 
Enghsh Hterature. If he had written nothing, and his 
Hfe and character had been portrayed by some Boswell, 
he would still be famous. His long-continued struggle 
against foes without and ^vithin occupied the attention 
of Europe for years. Many detested him, some idolized 
him, but all observed him and were interested in his 
fate. His proud and scornful spirit failed in the fight 
against tremendous odds, but it did not yield. 

He was, perhaps, the supreme egotist of all time. It 
is difficult to tell when, if ever, he is sincere, or when he 
is posing. He may have been the worst of men or he 
may have sought the public eye by appearing to be the 
worst of men. His characteristic despair may have 
been real or it may have been theatrical. Although he 
resented adverse criticism as has no other author, criti- 
cal attention of some sort he craved. He placed his 
own character under thin disguises as the hero of each 
of his longer poems, and he sought to fashion his life 

48 



CHILDE HAROLD^S PILGRIMAGE 49 

into a romantic tale. His own individual will he op- 
posed against the precedent, convention, and authority 
of society as long as he lived ; except for physical brav- 
ery there seemed to be no self-renunciation in his nature. 

Such individuality was his, yet he seemed to be the 
product of his time and the spokesman of his age. He 
lived in a period of revolution and revolt. Fifty years 
before Byron, Rousseau had produced works which had 
thrown Europe into turmoil. The French Revolution 
had made a new France and in almost every country of 
Europe there were changes scarcely less momentous, 
although not always so evident. Governments were 
becoming democratic, and hereditary rank and aristo- 
cratic pretention were losing their authority. In edu- 
cation and religion practices and beliefs that had been 
in use for centuries were being thrown aside. Society 
itself was losing its authority because of the magnified 
liberty, and even license, which was accorded the indi- 
vidual. This fact adds significance to M. Scherer's 
saying that Byron ^^has treated hardly any subject but 
one — himself; he posed all his life long." This is 
true in the sense that the consideration of the individual, 
as distinguished from the member of society, reached a 
climax in the time of Byron, and he was the chief expo- 
nent and spokesman of his age. He was no prophet ; 
perhaps he even lagged behind the true art of his time. 
What was subtle escaped him. But to-day one who 
would through poetry enter into the life of the early 
nineteenth century must read his works. As a mirror of 
the times his poetry has no rivals. 

Byron came of a famous family which in its later years 
had not borne a good reputation. The poet's father, 



50 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

John Byron, was a captain of the Guards, and was dissi- 
pated and worthless. He eloped with the wife of the 
Marquis of Carmorthen and married her after she had 
secured a divorce from her husband. Of this marriage 
was born Augusta, the poet's half-sister. In 1785 
John Byron married Miss Catherine Gordon, probably 
to gain her fortune, for he ill-treated his })ride and 
deserted her soon after the birth of the poet, in 1788. 
Byron's mother, however, was herself erratic and pas- 
sionate. She quarrelled with her son continually. 
Because of his club-foot she called him a lame brat and 
threw the fire-shovel and tongs at his head. But even 
at this age Byron did not tamely submit. When he was 
scolded for soiling a new frock, he tore the garment from 
top to bottom. 

When Bj^ron was an infant his mother removed from 
London to Scotland. There he attended school until, in 
1798, through the death of a cousin, he inherited the 
estate of Newstead Abbey and the title of lord. In 
1801 he was sent to Harrow, where he remained for four 
years. The young lord objected to the discipHne of the 
school and was an indifferent student, but was an om- 
niverous reader. He formed warm friendships and was 
not at all averse to using his fists in defence of friends 
if he thought them ill-treated. Once while yet a small 
bo3^ he approached an upper classman and offered to 
take half the beating which the big fellow was about to 
inflict on the little Peel. He gave much attention to 
athletic sports, especially to swimming, rowing, and 
boxing, and he became a leader among the boys. 

In 1805, Byron went to Cambridge University, from 
which he was graduated in 1808. As at Harrow he 



CHILD E HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 51 

gave far more attention to athletics and social pleasures 
than to study. If we mwiy believe his own story, he 
engaged in some dissipation. Nevertheless, he devoted 
considerable time to poetry. In 1806 he prepared a 
volume of poems which was privately printed and 
was circulated among his friends. In March, 1807, 
appeared Hours of Idleness. The inoffensive little 
volume was criticised with unnecessary harshness by the 
Edinhurgh Review. Byron, who was a professed ad- 
mirer of Pope, replied by writing, in 1809, a poem, 
English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, fashioned after 
the manner of the Dunciad. Its satire is the most 
unkindly and unjust in the Enghsh language. In it 
he maligned all the prominent English writers, good and 
bad alike. 

About the time of the publication of English Bards 
and Scotch Reviewers Byron took his seat in the House of 
Lords, but soon, becoming weary of pohtics, he went 
with his college friend, Hobhouse, for a trip on the con- 
tinent. 

On his return to London, Childe Harold was published, 
and in rapid succession there followed before 1816 The 
Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, Lara, Hebrew 
Melodies, The Siege of Corinth, and Parisinia. While 
he wrote he was engaged in a round of social pleasures. 
He became the lion of London society ; his manner, his 
dress, even his melancholy was imitated. 

After a series of love affairs that had been continuous 
from the age of fourteen, Byron, on January 2, 1815, 
was married to Miss Milbanke, an heiress. In December 
of the same year a daughter, Augusta Ada was born, 
and the next spring Byron left his family and country 



52 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

forever. He was accused of the greatest immorality, 
but it is doubtful whether or not he was guilty. Byron, 
however, made Httle attempt to defend himself; and, 
indeed, at this time, as frequently in his life, seemed to 
enjoy shocking the moral people of England by hinting 
that his character was a great deal worse than it really 
was. Byron travelled through Belgium and Switzer- 
land. He crossed into Italy and took up his residence 
in Venice. He wrote Manfred and Beppo, and began 
Don Juan. The poet was associated at this time 
^vith the Countess Guiccioli and a company of revo- 
lutionists who were working to secure independence 
for Italy. In his [)oem The Prophecy of Dante he pre- 
sented a vision of a free and united Itahan nation. The 
consequent suspicions of the Austrian government 
caused him and his companions to move from city to 
city. Nevertheless, while he remained in Italy he 
wrote the famous satire. The Vision of Judgment; the 
plays, Marino Faliero, The Two Foscari, Sardana- 
palus, and Cain; and he completed sixteen cantos of 
his unfinished masterpiece Do?i Juan. This poem sets 
the whole world at defiance. It not only ridicules 
superstition and sham, but with unrestrained license 
attacks the conventions of societ3\ It destroys one 
thing after another that civilization has sanctioned, and 
leaves existing only Byron himself, the Apostle of Re- 
volt, standing in the midst of the ruin he has made. 
Nevertheless, the satire is at times interspersed with rare 
beauties, like wild flowers springing up in the haunts of 
the Yahoos. Some of the descriptive and lyrical pas- 
sages are almost unequalled in tenderness and pathos. 
With Don Juan Byron's career as poet was practically 



CHILD E HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 53 

ended, but he was yet to live the noblest part of his life. 
In April, 1823, he became connected with an Enghsh 
committee which was seeking to assist Greece in her 
struggle for independence. He offered freely his ser- 
vices and his money. In July he sailed from Genoa 
and after remaining for some time on the island of Cepha- 
lonia awaiting orders, he reembarked and was nearly 
captured by a Turkish frigate. On the 5th of January, 
1824, he landed at Missolonghi, where he met with a 
most enthusiastic reception. Salutes were fired. The 
Avhole populace came out to welcome him, and he was 
conducted to his headquarters b}^ the prince and the 
dignitaries of the place. BjTon, however, soon dis- 
covered that the enthusiasm Avas but an outward show, 
and that disorder, dissention, and intrigue were prevalent. 
Nevertheless, he courageously planned to lead an expe- 
dition against Lepanto, the Turkish stronghold. On 
February 14, although he was ill, he manifested his char- 
acteristic firmness and self-possession by queUing an 
uprising of Suliotes. Early in April at Missolonghi 
he caught a severe cold which soon gave place to fever. 
He was without proper care or medical attendance and 
the end drew near. In his delirium, fanc3ang that he 
was leading his troops against Lepanto, he cried, ''For- 
ward ! forward ! follow me!" On the 19th of April 
he died. When the body of the hero and poet arrived in 
England, interment in Westminster Abbey was refused, 
and he was buried in the family vault at Hucknall. 

We may in part condemn his conduct and his principles, 
but we must admit that he helped to rid the world of 
abuses. As poet, as apostle of revolt, as hero, he is en- 
titled to be called a great man. 



54 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

The poetry of Pope is not to-day appreciated as it was 
in his own time, for we regard it as excessively classical. 
It seems to us that the poetic art of that time had de- 
parted so far from human life and feeling that it had be- 
come artificial, and that genuine poetry was not again pro- 
duced until the standards of poetic art had been modified 
by the influence of the Romantic Movement. In like 
manner Byron's poetry marks the crest of the wave of the 
Romantic Movement itself and is excessively Romantic. 
Poetry and criticism since his time have become less 
anarchistic and more constructive. As the poet of re- 
volt Byron helped to rid the world of many abuses, but 
to-day revolution is not a dominant characteristic of 
society, and his vigorous poems of protest have lost much 
of their power. We need to yield, however, little or none 
of the charm and beauty of his lyric and descriptive 
passages, for they are founded, not on a transient con- 
dition of society, but on universal and permanent char- 
acteristics of nature and the human heart. 

Bibliography 

Byron and Wordsworth, Swinburne. 

Essays, Macaulay. 

Essays in Criticism, Matthew Arnold. 

Essays in Literary Criticism, R. H. Hutton. The Macmillan 

Co. 
History of English Literature, H. A. Taine. 
Letters to Dead Authors, A. Lang. 
Life of Byron, Thomas Moore. 
Life of Byron, Nichol. The Macmillan Co. 
Life of Byron, Roden Noel. 
Lord Byron and his Contemporaries, Leigh Hunt. 



CHILD E HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 55 

Miscellaneous Essays, Morley. 
Recollections of Lord Byron, R. C. Dalles. 
Selections, Matthew Arnold. 
Studies in Literature, Dowden. 
Byron's Works, Prothero and Coleridge. 

CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

On July 2, 1809, Byron, with his friend Hobhouse and 
three attendants, sailed from Falmouth, England, for 
Lisbon. The poet had made extensive preparations for 
a long absence and had planned to visit Persia and India. 
They rode through Spain, and at Cadiz took ship for 
Malta. They then sailed to Previsa, and began a jour- 
ney through Albania. At Janina Childe Harold was 
begun. They passed on through Greece, and at Smyrna 
in March, 1810, the second canto of Childe Harold was 
completed. After spending some time in Constanti- 
nople and Athens, Byron returned to England in July, 
1811. 

On his return, his friend, Dallas, the author, asked 
Byron what he had written while abroad. Byron dis- 
played the manuscript of Hints from Horace. Dallas 
examined the poem and expressed his disapproval. 
''Have you no other result of your travels," he asked. 
''A few short pieces and a lot of Spenserian stanzas 
not worth troubling you with," the poet replied, "but 
you are welcome to them." The Spenserian stanzas 
proved to be Childe HarokVs Pilgrimage. Mr. Dallas 
was enthusiastic in his praise of the latter, but Byron 
preferred the Hints from Horace, a poem which was not 
pubUshed until after his death and might better have 



56 POEMS NAB RATI VE AND LYRICAL 

been destroyed. While Childe Harold was in press By- 
ron revised the poem, and in correspondence with his 
lawyers deprecated any identification of himself and his 
hero, although he had first called him Childe Byron. 

On the 29th of February, 1812, the first and second 
cantos of Childe Harold appeared and secured immediate 
and remarkable popularity. Byron said, ''I awoke one 
morning and found myself famous." Its success was 
largely due to the fact that it was suited to the public 
of that time. It was sentimental; it contained the 
confidences of a somewhat melancholy hero ; it criti- 
cized existing institutions in gentle satire ; it expressed 
mainly ideas that the Romantic Movement had made 
familiar, although a few years before they would have 
been considered startling. The two cantos that were 
published later were, mainly because of the influence of 
Wordsworth, vastly better ; but had they been pub- 
lished before Byron became famous it is doubtful whether 
they would have secured a great degree of popular favor. 

When Byron separated from his wife and child on the 
25th of April, 1816, he embarked for Ostend, and began 
the journey which became the basis for the third and 
fourth cantos of Childe Harold. He passed through 
Belgium and spent some days at Brussels. He visited 
the field of Waterloo. He went up the Rhine and passed 
into Switzerland where for some time he enjoyed the 
companionship of Shelley. There at Ouchy, in June, 
1816, he finished the third canto of Childe Harold, and it 
was published in November, 1816. 

In the fall of 1816 he set out with Hobhouse for 
Italy. He visited Milan, Verona, Arqua, Ferrara, 
Florence, Venice, and Rome. The fourth canto of 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 57 

Childe Harold was begun on June 26, 1817, was finished 
in September, 1817, and was published in April with a 
dedicatory letter addressed to Hobhouse. The fourth 
canto is ver\ different from the first and second cantos. 
The satire has become milder, the verse more melodious, 
and the style in general more polished. In particular, 
nature, as the result of the direct or indirect influence 
of Wordsworth, is viewed with a spiritualized sympathy 
hitherto rare in the poet's work. And in addition sym- 
pathy with human suffering, always characteristic 
of Byron's poetry, here appears at its best. Even the 
poet's personality, ever in the foreground in his verse, 
here abandons its controversial attitude and assumes 
an appreciative and reflective mood in harmony with the 
famous and bea.utiful scenes that are visited. In the 
fourth canto, there is little posing. Through it, there 
breathes a spirit of genuineness, and his verse founded 
on the realities of human passion, possesses in the main 
that sincere and happy style which is the essence of true 
poetry. 

PREFACE TO THE FIRST AND SECOND 
CANTOS OF CHILDE HAROLD 

The following poem was written, for the most part, 
amidst the scenes which it attempts to describe. It was 
begun in Albania ; and the parts relative to Spain and 
Portugal were composed from the author's observations 
in those countries. Thus much it may be necessary to 
state for the correctness of the descriptions. The scenes 
attempted to be sketched are in Spain, Portugal, Epirus, 



58 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Acarnania, and Greece. There, for the present, the 
poem stops; its reception will determine whether the 
author may venture to conduct his readers to the capital 
of the East, through Ionia and Phrygia : these two 
cantos are merely experimental. 

A fictitious character is introduced for the sake of 
giving some connection to the piece; which, however, 
makes no pretension to regularity. It has been sug- 
gested to me by friends, on whose opinions I set a high 
value, that in this fictitious character, ''Childe Harold," 
I may incur the suspicion of having intended some real 
personage : this I beg leave, once for all, to disclaim ; 
Harold is the child of imagination, for the purpose I 
have stated. In some very trivial particulars, and 
those merely local, there might be grounds for such a 
notion; but in the main points, I should hope none 
whatever. 

It is almost superfluous to mention that the appella- 
tion ^'Cbilde," as ''Childe Waters," ''Childe Childers," 
etc., is used as more consonant with the old structure of 
versification which I have adopted. The ''Good 
Night," in the beginning of the first canto, was suggested 
by Lord MaxiveU's Good Night in the Border Minstrelsy, 
edited by Mr. Scott. 

With the difterent poems which have been published 
on Spanish subjects, there may be found some slight co- 
incidence in the first part, which treats of the Peninsula, 
but it can only be casual ; as, with the exception of a 
few concluding stanzas, the whole of this poem was writ- 
ten in the Ijcvant. 

The stanza of Spenser, according to one of our most 
successful poets, admits of every variety. Dr. Beattie 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 59 

makes the following observation : ^'Not long ago, I be- 
gan a poem in the style and stanza of Spenser, in which I 
propose to give full scope to my inclination, and be 
either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender 
or satirical, as the humour strikes me ; for, if I mistake 
not, the measure which I have adopted admits equally 
of all these kinds of composition." Strengthened in my 
opinion by such authority, and by the example of some 
in the highest order of Itahan poets, I shall make no 
apology for attempts at similar variations in the follow- 
ing composition ; satisfied that if they are unsuccessful, 
their failure must be in the execution, rather than in the 
design, sanctioned by the practice of Ariosto, Thomson, 
and Beattie. 

London, February, 1812. 



DEDICATORY EPISTLE ADDRESSED TO 
HOBHOUSE 

''To John Hobhouse, Esq., A.M., F.R.S., etc. 

''Venice, January 2, 1818. 
"My Dear Hobhouse : — After an interval of eight 
years between the -composition of the first and last can- 
tos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about 
to be submitted to the pubhc. In parting with so old a 
friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one 
still older and better, — to one who has beheld the birth 
and death of the other, and to whom I am far more in- 
debted for the social advantages of an enlightened friend- 
ship than — though not ungrateful — I can, or could be, 
to Childe Harold, for any public favor reflected through 



60 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

the poem or the poet, — to one whom I have known long 
and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful 
over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my 
prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel 
and trusty in peril, — to a friend often tried and never 
found wanting, — to yourself. 

''In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth; and in 
dedicating to you in its complete, or at least concluded 
state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most 
thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I 
wish to do honour to myself by the record of many years' 
intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadiness, 
and of honour. It is not for minds hke ours to give or to 
receive flattery; yet the praises of sincerity have ever 
been permitted to the voice of friendship ; and it is not 
for you, nor even for others, but to reheve a heart which 
has not elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to 
the encounter of good-will as to withstand the shock 
firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your good 
qualities, or rather the advantages which I have derived 
from their exertion. Even the recurrence of the date of 
this letter, the anniversary of the most unfortunate day 
of my existence, but which cannot poison my future 
while I retain the resource of your friendship, and of my 
own faculties, will henceforth have a more agreeable rec- 
ollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this 
my attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, 
such as few men have experienced, and no one could ex- 
perience without thinking better of his species and of 
himself. 

"It has been our fortune to traverse together, at vari- 
ous periods, the countries of chivalry, history, and fable, 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 61 

— Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italj;^; and what Athens 
and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice 
and Rome have been more recently. The poem also, 
or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied me from first 
to last ; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity 
which induces me to reflect with complacency on a com- 
position which in some degree connects me with the 
spot where it was produced, and the objects it would fain 
describe ; and however unworthy it may be deemed of 
those magical and memorable abodes, however short it 
may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate im- 
pressions, yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, 
and of feeling for what is glorious, it has been to me a 
source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it 
with a kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that 
events could have left me for imaginary objects. 

''With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there 
will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the pre- 
ceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from 
the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, 
that I had become weary of drawing a line Avhich every 
one seemed determined not to perceive : like the Chinese 
in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, whom nobody would 
believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, 
and imagined that I had drawn, a distinction between 
the author and the pilgrim ; and the very anxiety to 
preserve this difference, and disappointment at finding it 
unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition 
that I determined to abandon it altogether — and have 
done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, 
formed on that subject are now a matter of indifference ; 
the work is to depend on itself, and not on the writer ; 



62 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

and the author, who has no resources in his own mind be- 
yond the reputation, transient or permanent, which is to 
arise from his hterary efforts, deserves the fate of authors. 

'' In the course of the following canto it was my inten- 
tion, either in the text or in the notes, to have touched 
upon the present state of Italian literature, and perhaps 
of manners. But the text, within the limits I proposed, 
I soon found hardly sufficient for the labjTinth of exter- 
nal objects, and the consequent reflection; and for the 
whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am 
indebted to yourself, and these were necessarily hmited 
to the elucidation of the text. 

'4t is also a delicate, and no very grateful task, to 
dissert upon the literature and manners of a nation so 
dissimilar; and requires an attention and impartiality 
which would induce us — though perhaps no inattentive 
observers, nor ignorant of the language or customs of the 
people amongst whom we have recently abode — to dis- 
trust, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly 
examine our information. The state of literary, as well 
as political party, appears to run, or to hove run, so high 
that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is 
next to impossible. It may be enough, then, at least for 
my purpose, to quote from their own beautiful language : 
'Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che vanta la 
lingua la piu nobile ed insieme la piu dolce, tutte le vie 
diverse si possono tentare, e che sinche la patria di Alfieri 
e di Monti non ha perduto V antico valore, in tutte essa 
dovrebbe essere la prima.' Italy has great names still, 
— Canova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Visconti, 
Morelh, Cicognara, Albrizzi Mezzophanti, Mai, Mus- 
toxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, will secure to the present 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 63 

generation an honourable place in most of the depart- 
ments of Art, Science, and Belies Lettres ; and in some 
the very highest : Europe — the World — has but one 
Canova. 

"It has been somewhere said by Alfieri that ^ La pianta 
uomo nasce piu robusta in Italia che in qualunque altra 
terra, e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si commettono 
ne sono una prova.' Without subscribing to the latter 
part of his proposition, a dangerous doctrine, the truth 
of which may be disputed on better grounds, namely, 
that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than 
their neighbours, — that man must be wilfully blind, or 
ignorantly heedless, who is not struck with the extraor- 
dinary capacity of this people, or, if such a word be 
admissible, their capabilities, the facility of their ac- 
quisitions, the rapiditj^ of their conceptions, the fire of 
their genius, their sense of beauty, and, amidst all the 
disadvantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of 
battles, and the despair of ages, their still unquenched 
'longing after immortality,' — the immortahty of inde- 
pendence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the 
walls of Rome, heard the simple lament of the labourers' 
chorus, ' Roma ! Roma ! Roma ! Roma non e piia come 
era prima,' it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy 
dirge ^vith the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation 
still yelled from the London taverns over the carnage 
of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, 
of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you 
yourself have exposed in a work worthy of the better 
days of our history. For me, — 
'' 'Non movero mai corda 

Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda.' 



64 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

" What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations 
it were useless for Englishmen to inquire, till it becomes 
ascertained that England has acquired something more 
than a permanent army and a suspended Habeas Corpus ; 
it is enough for them to look at home. For what they 
have done abroad, and especially in the South, 'Verily 
they will have their reward/ and at no very distant 
period. 

'' Wishing you, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable 
return to that country whose real welfare can be dearer 
to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this poem in 
its completed state ; and repeat once more how truly I 
am ever 

''Your obliged and affectionate friend, 

"Byron.'' 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 

A ROMAUNT 

Canto the Fourth 



I STOOD in Venice,° on the Bridge of Sighs ; 

A palace° and a prison on each hand ; 

I saw from out the wave her structures rise 

As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand : 

A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 

Around me, and a dying glory smiles 

O'er the far times, when many a subject land 



CHILD E HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 65 

Looked to the winged Lion's° marble piles, 
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred 
isles. ° 

II 

She looks a sea Cybele,° fresh from ocean, 10 

Rising with her tiara of proud towers 
At airy distance, with majestic motion, 
A ruler of the waters and their powers : 
And such she was ; — her daughters had their dowers 
From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 15 
Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers. 
In purple was she robed, and of her feast 
Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. 

Ill 

In Venice Tasso's echoes° are no more, 
And silent rows the songless gondolier ; 20 

Her palaces are crumbling to the shore. 
And music meets not always now the ear : 
Those days are gone — but beaut}^ still is here. 
States fall, arts fade — but nature doth not die, 
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, 25 

The pleasant place of all festivity. 
The revel of the earth, the masque of Italy !° 

IV 

But unto us she hath a spell beyond 

Her name in story, and her long array 

Of mighty shadows, whose dim forms despond ■ — 30 

Above the dogeless° city's vanished sway ; 



66 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Ours is a trophy which will not decay 
With the Rialto° ; Shylock and the Moor,^ 
And Pierre, ° cannot be swept or worn away — 
The keystones of the arch ! though all were o'er — 35 
For us repeopled were the solitary shore. 



The beings of the mind are not of clay ; 
Essentially immortal, they create 
And multiply in us a brighter ray 
And more beloved existence : that which Fate — 40 
Prohibits to dull hfe, in this our state 
Of mortal bondage, by these spirits supplied, 
First exiles, then replaces what we hate ; 
Watering the heart whose early flowers have died, 
And with a fresher growth replenishing the void. 45 

VI 

Such is the refuge of our youth and age, 
The first from hope, the last from vacancy ; 
And this worn feeling peoples many a page. 
And, may be, that which grows beneath mine eye : 
Yet there are things whose strong reality 60 

Outshines our fairy-land ; in shape and hues 
More beautiful than our fantastic sky. 
And the strange constellations which the Muse 
O'er her wild universe is skilful to diffuse: 

VII 

I saw or dreamed of such, — but let them go, — 55 
They came like truth, and disappeared like dreams ; 



OHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 67 

And whatso'er they were — are now but so : 
I could replace them if I would ; still teems 
My mind with many a form which aptly seems 
Such as I sought for, and at moments found ; — 60 
Let these too go — for waking reason deems 
Such over-weening phantasies unsound, 
And other voices speak, and other sights surround. 



VIII 

I've taught me other tongues, and in strange eyes 
Have made me not a stranger ; to the mind — 65 
Which is itself, no changes bring surprise ; 
Nor is it harsh to make nor hard to find 
A country with — ay, or without mankind : 
Yet was I born° where men are proud to be, — 
Not without cause ; and should I leave behind 70 
The inviolate island of the sage and free, 
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea ? 



IX 

Perhaps I loved it well ; and should I lay 
My ashes in a soil which is not mine. 
My spirit shall resume it — if we may 75 

Unbodied choose a sanctuary. I twine 
My hopes of being remembered in my line 
With my land's language : if too fond and far 
These aspirations in their scope incline, — 
If my fame should be, as my fortunes are, 80 

Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar 



68 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



My name from out the temple° where the dead 
Are honoured by the nations — let it be — 
And Hght the laurels on a loftier head ! 
And be the Spartan's epitaph on me — 85 

' Sparta hath° many a worthier son than he.' 
Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need ; 
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree 
I planted ; they have torn me, and I bleed : 89 

I should have known what fruit would spring from 
such a seed. 

XI 

The spouseless Adriatic" mourns her lord ; 
And, annual marriage now no more renewed, 
The Bucentaur hes rotting unrestored, 
Neglected garment of her widowhood ! 
St. Mark yet sees his lion where he stood 95 

Stand, but in mockery of his withered power. 
Over the proud Place where an Emperor° sued. 
And monarchs gazed and envied in the hour 
When Venice was a queen with an unequalled dower. 

XII 

The Suabian° sued, and now the Austrian reigns — lOO 
An Emperor° tramples where an Emperor knelt ; 
Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains 
Clank over sceptred cities ; nations melt 
From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt 
The sunshine for a while, and downward go lOo 

Like lauwine° loosened from the mountain's belt : 



CHILDE HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 69 

Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo° ! 
Th' octogenarian chief, Byzantium's conquering foe ! 

XIII 

Before St. Mark still glow his steeds of brass,° 
Their gilded collars glittering in the sun ; no 

But is not Doria's menace° come to pass? 
Are they not bridled f — Venice, lost and won. 
Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done, 
Sinks, ° like a sea-weed, into whence she rose ! 
Better be whelmed beneath the waves, and shun 115 
Even in destruction's depth, her foreign foes. 
From whom submission wrings an infamous repose. 

XIV 

In youth she was all glory, — a new Tyre ; 
Her very by- word sprung from victory. 
The ^ Planter of the Lion,' which through fire 120 
The blood she bore o'er subject earth and sea; 
Though making many slaves, herself still free. 
And Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite°; 
Witness Troy's rival, Candia ! Vouch it, ye 
Immortal waves that saw Lepanto's fight° ! 125 

For ye -are names no time nor tyranny can bhght. 

XV 

Statues of glass — all shivered — the long file 

Of her dead Doges are declined to dust ; 

But where they dwelt, the vast and sumptuous pile 

Bespeaks the pageant of their splended trust ; 130 



70 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Their sceptre broken, and their sword in rust, 
Have yielded to the stranger : empty halls. 
Thin streets, and foreign aspects, such as must 
Too oft remind her who and what enthrals, 131 

Have flung a desolate cloud o'er Venice' lovely walls. 

XVI 

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, 
And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war, 
Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse,° 
Her voice their only ransom from afar : 
See ! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car 140 

Of the o'ermastered victor stops, the reins 
Fall from his hands, his idle scimitar 
Starts from its belt — he rends his captive's chains. 
And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains. 

XVII 

Thus, Venice, if no stronger claim were thine, — 145 
Were all thy proud historic deeds forgot. 
Thy choral memory of the Bard divine. 
Thy love of Tasso, should have cut the knot 
Which ties thee to thy tyrants ; and thy lot 
Is shameful to the nations, most of all, 150 

Albion ! to thee : the Ocean Queen should not ' 
Abandon Ocean's children ; in the fall 
Of Venice think of thine, despite thy watery wall. 

XVIII 

I loved her from my boyhood ; she to me 
< Was as a fairy city of the heart, 165 



CHILDE HABOLD'S PILGRIMAGE 71 

Rising like water-columns from the sea, 
Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the mart; 
And Otway,° Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakspeare's art, 
Had stamped her image in me, and even so, 
Although I found her thus, we did not part ; 160 

Perchance even dearer in her day of woe, 
Than when she was a boast, a marvel, and a show. 

XIX 

I can repeople with the past — and of 
The present there is still for eye and thought, 
And meditation chastened down, enough ; 165 

And more, it may be, than I hoped or sought ; 
And of the happiest moments which were wrought. 
Within the web of my existence, some 
From thee, fair Venice ! have their colours caught : 
There are some feelings time cannot benumb, 170 
Nor Torture shake, or mine would now be cold and 
dumb. 

XX 

But from their nature will the tannen° grow 
Loftiest on loftiest and least sheltered rocks. 
Rooted in barrenness, where nought below 
Of soil supports them 'gainst the Alpine shocks 175 
Of eddying storms; yet springs the trunk, and 

mocks 
The howling tempest, till its height and frame 
Are worthy of the mountains from whose blocks 
Of bleak, gray granite into life it came. 
And grew a giant tree ; — the mind may grow the 

same. iso 



POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



XXI 

Existence may be borne, and the deep root 
Of life and sufferance make its firm abode 
In bare and desolated bosoms ; mute 
The camel labours with the heaviest load, 
And the wolf dies in silence, — not bestowed 185 
In vain should such example be ; if they, 
Things of ignoble or of savage mood 
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay 
May temper it to bear, — it is but for a day. 

XXII 

All suffering doth destroy, or is destroyed, 190 

Even by the sufferer ; and, in each event. 
Ends : — Some, with hope replenished and rebuoyed, 
Return to whence they came — with like intent, 
And weave their web again ; some, bowed and bent, 
Wax gray and ghastly, withering ere their time, 195 
And perish with the reed on which the}^ leant, 
Some seek devotion, toil, war, good, or crime, 
According as their souls were formed to sink or climb. 

XXIII 

But ever and anon of griefs subdued 

There comes a token like a scorpion's sting, 200 

Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued ; 

And slight withal may be the things which bring 

Back on the heart the weight which it would fling 

Aside for ever : it may be a sound — 

A tone of music — summer's eve — or spring — 205 



CHILDE HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 7' 

A flower — the wind — the ocean — which shall wound 
Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly 
bound ; 

XXIV 

And how and why we know not, nor can trace 
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind, 
But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface 210 

The blight and blackening which it leaves behind, 
Which out of things familiar, undesigned, 
When least we deem of such, calls up to view 
The spectres whom no exorcism can bind, — 214 
The cold, the changed, perchance the dead — anew. 
The mourned, the loved, the lost — too many ! — yet 
how few ! 

XXV 

But my soul wanders ; I demand it back 
To meditate amongst decay, and stand 
A ruin amidst ruins ; there to track 
Fallen states and buried greatness, o'er a land 220 
Which ivas the mightiest in its old command. 
And is the loveliest, and must ever be 
The master-mould of Nature's heavenly hand ; 
Wherein were cast the heroic and the free, 
The beautiful, the brave, the lords of earth and sea. 225 

XXVI 

The commonwealth of kings, the men of Rome ! 
And even since, and now, fair Italy ! 
Thou art the garden of the world, the home 
Of all Art 3delds, and Nature can decree; 



J • 



74 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Even in thy desert, what is hke to thee ? 230 

Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste 
More rich than other chmes' fertihty; 
Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced 
With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced. 



XXVII ; 

The moon is up,° and yet it is not night ; 235 

Sunset divides the sky with her ; a sea 
Of glory streams along the Alpine height 
Of blue Friuli's mountains^ ; Heaven is free 
From clouds, but of all colours seems to be, — | 

Melted to one vast Iris of the West, — ■ 240 j 

Where the Day joins the past Eternity; 
While, on the other hand, meek Dian's crest 
Floats through the azure air — an island of the blest ! 



XXVIII 

A single star° is at her side, and reigns 
With her o'er half the lovely heaven ; but still 245 
Yon sunny sea heaves brightly, and remains 
Rolled o'er the peak of the far Rhajtian hill, 
As Day and Night contending were, until 
Nature reclaimed her order : gently flows 
The deep-dyed Brenta, where their hues instil 250 
The odorous purple of a new-born rose, 
Which streams upon her stream, and glassed within 
it glows, 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 75 



XXIX 

Filled ^vith the face of heaven, which, from afar, 
Comes clown upon the waters ; all its hues, 
From the rich sunset to the rising star, 255 

Their magical variety diffuse : 
And now they change ; a paler shadow strews 
Its mantle o'er the mountains; parting day 
Dies hke the dolphin, ° whom each pang imbues 
With a new colour as it gasps away, 260 

The last still loveliest, till — 'tis gone — and all is 
gray. 

XXX 

There is a tomb in Arqua ; — reared in air, 
Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose 
The bones of Laura's lover° : here repair 
Many familiar with his well-sung woes, 265 

The pilgrims of his genius. He arose 
To raise a language, and his land reclaim 
From the dull yoke of her barbaric foes : 
Watering the tree° which bears his lady's name 
With his melodious tears, he gave himself to fame. 270 

XXXI 

They keep his dust in Arqua, where he died ; 

The mountain- village where his latter days 

Went down the vale of years ; and 'tis their pride — 

An honest pride — and let it be their praise. 

To offer to the passing stranger's gaze 275 

His mansion and his sepulchre ; both plain 

And venerably simple, such as raise 



76 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

A feeling more accordant with his strain 
Than if a pyramid formed his monumental fane. 

XXXII 

And the soft quiet hamlet where he dwelt 280 

Is one of that complexion which seems made 
For those who their mortality have felt, 
And sought a refuge from their hopes decayed 
In the deep umbrage of a green hill's shade, 
Which shows a distant prospect far away 285 

Of busy cities, now in vain displayed, 
For they can lure no further ; and the ray 
Of a bright sun can make sufficient holiday, 

XXXIII 

Developing the mountains, leaves, and flowers, 
And shining in the brawling brook, where-by, 290 
Clear as its current, glide the sauntering hours 
With a calm languor, which, though to the eye 
Idlesse it seem, hath its mortality. 
If from society we learn to five, 
'Tis solitude should teach us how to die ; 295 

It hath no flatterers; vanity can give 
No hollow aid ; alone — man with his God must strive : 

XXXIV 

Or, it may be, with demons, who impair 
The strength of better thoughts, and seek their prey 
In melancholy bosoms, such as were 300 

Of moody texture from their earliest day, 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 77 

And loved to dwell in darkness and dismay- 
Deeming themselves predestined to a doom 
Which is not of the pangs that pass away ; 
Making the sun like blood, the earth a tomb, 305 
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom. 

XXXV 

Ferrara° ! in thy wide and grass-grown streets, 
Whose symmetry was not for solitude. 
There seems as 'twere a curse upon the seats 
Of former sovereigns, and the antique brood 3io 

Of Este,° which for many an age made good 
Its strength within thy walls, and was of yore 
Patron or tyrant, as the changing mood 
Of petty power impelled, of those who wore 314 

The wreath which Dante's brow alone had worn before. 

XXXVI 

And Tasso is their glory and their shame. 
Hark to his strain, and then survey his cell ! 
And see how dearly earned Torquato's fame. 
And where Alfonso bade his poet dwell : 
The miserable despot could not quell 320 

The insulted mind he sought to quench, and blend 
With the surrounding maniacs, in the hell 
Where he had plunged it. Glory without end 
Scattered the clouds away ; and on that name attend 

XXXVII 

The tears and praises of all time ; while thine 325 
Would rot in its oblivion — in the sink 



78 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Of worthless dust, which from thy boasted line 
Is shaken into nothing — but the link 
Thou formest in his fortunes bids us think 
Of thy poor malice, naming thee with scorn ; 330 

Alfonso, how thy ducal pageants shrink 
From thee ! if in another station born, 
Scarce fit to be the slave of him thou mad'st to mourn : 



XXXVIII 






Thou, formed to eat, and be despised, and die, 
Even as the beasts that perish, save that thou 335 

. Hadst a more splendid trough and wider sty ! 
He, with a glory round his furrowed brow. 
Which emanated then, and dazzles now, 
In face of all his foes, the Cruscan quire,° 
And Boileau, whose rash envy could allow 340 

No strain which shamed his country's creaking lyre, 

That whetstone of the teeth — monotony in wire ! 

XXXIX 

Peace to Torquato's injured shade ! 'twas his 
In life and death to be the mark where Wrong 
Aimed with her poisoned arrows, — but to miss. 345 
Oh, victor unsurpassed in modern song ! 
Each year brings forth its millions; but how long 
The tide of generations shall roll on, 
And not the whole combined and countless throng 
Compose a mind like thine ! though all in one 350 
Condensed their scattered rays, they would not for 
a sun. 






CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 79 



XL 

Great as thou art, yet paralleled by those, 
Thy countrymen, before thee born to shine, 
The Bards° of Hell and Chivalry : first rose 
The Tuscan father's comedy divine ; 355 

Then, not unequal to the Florentine, 
The southern Scott, the minstrel who called forth 
A new creation with his magic line. 
And, like the Ariosto of the North, 359 

5ang lady-love and war, romance and knightly worth. 

XLI • 

The lightning^ rent from Ariosto's bust 
The iron crown of laurel's mimic'd leaves; 
Nor was the ominous element unjust, 
For the true laurel-wreath which Glory weaves 
Is of the tree no bolt of thunder cleaves, 365 

And the false semblance but disgraced his brow ; 
Yet still, if fondly Superstition grieves. 
Know, that the lightning sanctifies below 
kVhate'er it strikes ; — yon head is doubly sacred now. 



XLTI 

Italia ! oh Italia ! thou who hast 370 

The fatal gift of beauty, which became 

A funeral dower of present woes and past. 

On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame, 

And annals graved in characters of flame. 

Oh, God ! that thou wert in thy nakedness 375 



80 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Less lovely or more powerful, and could claim 
Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press 
To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress ;_ 

XLIII 

Then might'st thou more appal ; or, less desired, 
Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored 380 

For thy destructive charms ; then, still untired, 
Would not be seen the armed torrents poured 
Down the deep Alps ; nor would the hostile horde ! 
Of many-nationed spoilers from the Po 
Quaff blood and water ; nor the stranger's sword 385 
Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so, 
Victor or vanquished, thou the slave of friend or foe. 

XLIV 

Wandering in youth, I traced the path of him, 
The Roman fricnid of Rome's least-mortal mind, 
The friend of Tully° : as my bark did skim 396 

The bright blue waters with a fanning wind, 
Came Megara before me, and behind 
iEgina lay, Piraeus on the right. 
And Corinth on the left ; I lay reclined 
Along the prow, and saw all these unite 39 

In ruin, even as he had seeyi the desolate sight ; 

XLV 

For Time hath not rebuilt them, but upreared 
Barbaric dwellings on their shattered site, 
Which only make more mourned and more endeared 
The few last rays of their far-scattered light, 40Q 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 81 

And the crushed rehcs of their vanished might. 
The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, 
These sepulchres of cities, which excite 
Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page 
rhe moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. 405 

XLVI 

That page is now before me, and on mine 
His country's ruin added to the mass 
Of perished states he mourned in their decline, 
And I in desolation : all that was 
Of then destruction is : and now, alas ! 410 

Rome — Rome imperial, bows her to the storm, 
In the same dust and blackness, and we pass 
The skeleton of her Titanic form, 
Wrecks of another world, whose ashes «till are warm. 

XLVII 

Yet, Italy, through every other land 415 

Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side ! 
Mother of Arts ! as once of arms ; thy hand 
Was then our guardian, and is still our guide ! 
Parent of our Religion ! whom the wide 
Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven ! 420 
Europe, repentant of her parricide. 
Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, 
loll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven. 

XLVIII 

But Arno wins us to the fair white walls, 

Where the Etrurian Athens" claims and keeps 425 



82 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

A softer feeling for her fairy halls, 
Girt by her theatre of hills, she reaps 
Her corn, and wine, and oil, and Plenty leaps 
To laughing life, with her redundant horn. 
Along the banks where smiling Arno sweeps 430 

Was modern Luxury of Commerce born, 
And buried Learning rose, redeemed to a new morn. 

XLIX 

There, too, the Goddess° loves in stone, and fills 
The air around with beauty ; we inhale 
The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils 435 

Part of its immortality ; the veil 
Of heaven is half undrawn ; within the pale 
We stand, and in that form and face behold 
What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail;; 
And to the fond idolaters of old 440 

Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould 



We gaze and turn away, and know not where, 
Dazzled and drunk with beauty, till the heart 
Reels with its fulness ; there — for ever there — 
Chained to the chariot of triumphal Art, 446 

We stand as captives, and would not depart. 
Away ! — there need no words, nor terms precise, 
The paltry jargon° of the marble mart, 
Where Pedantry gulls Folly — we have eyes : 
Blood, pulse, and breast confirm the Dardan Shepherdls 
prize.° 4^ 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 83 

LI 

Appearedst thou not to Paris in this guise? 
Or the more deeply blest Anchises° ? or, 
In all thy perfect goddess-ship, when lies 
Before thee thy own vanquished Lord of War, 
And gazing in thy face as toward a star, 455 

Laid on thy lap, his eyes to thee upturn. 
Feeding on thy sweet cheek ! while thy lips are 
With lava kisses melting while they burn, 
Showered on his eyehds, brow, and mouth, as from an 
urn ! 

LII 

Glowing, and circumfused in speechless love, 460 

There full divinity inadequate 
That feeling to express, or to improve. 
The gods become as mortals, and man's fate 
Has moments like their brightest ; but the weight 
Of earth recoils upon us ; let it go ! 465 

We can recall such visions, and create, 
From what has been, or might be, things which grow 
Into thy statue's form, and look like gods below. 

LIII 

I leave to learned fingers, and wise hands, 

The artist and his ape, to teach and tell 470 

How well his connoisseurship understands 

The graceful bend, and the voluptuous swell : 

Let these describe the undescribable : 

I would not their vile breath should crisp the stream 

Wherein that image shall for ever dwell : 475 



84 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

The unruffled mirror of the loveliest dream 
That ever left the sky on the deep soul to beam. 

LIV 

In Santa Croce's° holy precincts lie » 

Ashes which make it holier, dust which is 
Even in itself an immortality, 480 

Though there were nothing save the past, and this. 
The particle of those subhmities 
Which have relapsed to chaos : here repose 
Angelo's, Alfieri's bones, and his. 
The starry Galileo, with his woes; 
Here Machiavelli's earth returned to whence it rose 

LV 



4 



These are four minds, which, like the elements, 

Might furnish forth creation : — Italy ! 

Time, which hath wronged thee with ten thousand 

rents 
Of thine imperial garment, shall deny, 490 

And hath denied, to every other sky, 
Spirits which soar from ruin : thy decay 
Is still impregnate with divinity, 
Which gilds it with revivifying ray : 
Such as the great of yore, Canova° is to-day. 495 

LVI 

But where repose the all Etruscan three — 
Dante and Petrarch, and scarce less than they. 
The bard of Prose, ° creative spirit! he 
Of the Hundred Tales of love — where did they lay 



CHILD E HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 85 

Their bones, distinguished from our common clay 500 
In death as hfe ? Are they resolved to dust, 
And have their country's marbles nought to say ? 
Could not her quarries furnish forth one bust ? 
Did they not to her breast their filial earth entrust ? 

LVII 

Ungrateful Florence ! Dante sleeps afar,° 505 

Like Scipio, buried b}^ the upbraiding shore : 
Thy factions, in their worse than civil war, 
Proscribed the bard whose name for evermore 
Their children's children would in vain adore 
With the remorse of ages : and the crown 510 

Which Petrarch's laureate brow° supremely wore, 
Upon a far and foreign soil had grown. 
His life, his fame, his grave, though rifled — not thine 
own. 

LVIII 

Boccaccio" to his parent earth bequeathed 
His dust, — and lies it not her great among, 515 

With many a sweet and solemn requiem breathed 
O'er him who formed the Tuscan's siren tongue ? 
That music in itself, whose sounds are song, 
The poetry of speech ? No ; — even his tomb, 
Uptorn, must bear the hysena bigot's wrong, 520 

No more amidst the meaner dead find room, 
N'or claim a passing sigh, because it told for whom! 

LIX 

And Santa Croce wants their mighty dust ; 
Yet for this want more noted, as of yore 



86 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

The Caesar's pageant,° shorn of Brutus' bust, 525 

Did but of Rome's best Son remind her more : 
Happier Ravenna ! on thy hoary shore, 
Fortress of faUing empire ! honoured sleeps 
The immortal exile : — Arqua, too, her store 
Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps, 530 

While Florence vainly begs her banished dead and 
weeps. 

LX 

What is her pyramid° of precious stones ? 

Of porphyry, jasper, agate, and all hues i 

Of gem and marble, to encrust the bones ' 

Of merchant-dukes ? the momentary dews 535 

Which, sparkling to the twilight stars, infuse ■ 

Freshness in the green turf that wraps the dead » 
Whose names are mausoleums of the Muse, 
Are gently prest with far more reverent tread 
Than ever placed the slab which paves the princely 

head. 540 

LXI 

There be more things to greet the heart and eyes 
In Arno's dome° of Art's most princely shrine. 
Where Sculpture with her rainbow sister vies ; 
There be more marvels yet — but not for mine ; 
For I have been accustomed to entwine 54i 

My thoughts with Nature rather in the fields, 
Than Art in galleries : though a work divine 
Calls for my spirit's homage, yet it yields 
Less than it feels, because the weapon which it wields 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 87 



LXII 

Is of another temper, and I roam 550 

By Thrasimene's lake, in the defiles° 
Fatal to Roman rashness, more at home ; 
For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles 
Come back before me, as his skill beguiles 
The host between the mountains and the shore, 555 
Where Courage falls in her despairing files. 
And torrents, swollen to rivers° with their gore. 
Reek through the sultry plain, with legends scattered 
o'er. 

LXIII 

Like to a forest felled by mountain winds ; 
And such the storm of battle on this day, 560 

And such the frenzy, whose convulsion blinds 
To all save carnage, that, beneath the fray, 
An earthquake reeled unheededly away ! 
None felt stern Nature rocking at his feet, 
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay 565 

Upon their bucklers for a winding sheet, 
Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations 
meet ! 

LXIV 

The earth to them was as a rolling bark 
Which bore them to eternity; they saw 
The Ocean round, but had no time to mark 570 

The motions of their vessel ; Nature's law 
In them suspended, recked not of the awe 
Which reigns when mountains tremble, and the 
birds 



88 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Plunge in the clouds for refuge, and withdraw 
From their down-toppling nests; and bellowing 

herds 575 

Stumble o'er heaving plains, and man's dread hath 

no words. 

LXV I 

Far other scene is Thrasimene now : 
Her lake a sheet of silver, and her plain 
Rent by no ravage save the gentle plough ; 
Her aged trees rise thick as once the slain 580 . 

Lay where their roots are ; but a brook hath ta'en — I 
A little rill of scanty stream and bed — ' 

A name of blood from that day's sanguine rain ; 
And Sanguinetto tells ye where the dead L 

Made the earth wet, and turned the unwilling waters P 
red. 585 

LXVI j 

But thou, Clitumnus,° in thy sweetest wave f 

Of the most living crystal that was e'er 
The haunt of river nymph, to gaze and lave 
Her limbs where nothing hid them, thou dost rear 
Thy grassy banks whereon the milk-white steer 590 
Grazes ; the purest god of gentle waters ! 
And most serene of aspect, and most clear; 
Surely that stream was unprofaned by slaughters, 
A mirror and a bath for Beauty's youngest daughters ! 

LXVII 

And on thy happy shore a Temple still, 595 

Of small and delicate proportion, keeps, 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 89 

Upon a mild declivity of hill, 
Its memory of thee ; beneath it sweeps 
Thy current's calmness ; oft from out it leaps 
The finny darter with the glittering scales, 600 

Who dwells and revels in thy glassy deeps ; 
While, chance, some scattered water-lily sails 
Down where the shallower wave still tells its bubbling 
tales. 

LXVIII 

Pass not unblest the Genius of the place ! 
If through the air a zephyr more serene 605 

Win to the brow, 'tis his ; and if ye trace 
Along his margin a more eloquent green, 
If on the heart the freshness of the scene 
Sprinkle its coolness, and from the dry dust 
Of weary life a moment lave it clean 6io 

With Nature's baptism — 'tis to him ye must 
Pay orisons for this suspension of disgust. 



LXIX 

The roar of waters ! — from the headlong height 
Velino° cleaves the wave-worn precipice ; 
The fall of waters ! rapid as the light 615 

The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; 
The hell of waters ! where they howl and hiss, 
And boil in endless torture : while the sweat 
Of their great agony, wrung out from this 
Their Phlegethon,° curls round the rocks of jet 620 
That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, 



I 



90 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

LXX 

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again 
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, 
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain. 
Is an eternal April to the ground, 625 

Making it all one emerald : — how profound 
The gulf ! and how the giant element 
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound. 
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent 
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful 
vent 630 

LXXI 

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows 
More like the fountain of an infant sea 
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes 
Of a new world, than only thus to be 
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, 635. 

With many windings, through the vale : — Look | 
back! ^ 

Lo ! where it comes like an eternity. 
As if to sweep down all things in its track. 
Charming the eye with dread, — a matchless cataract, 

LXXII 

Horribly beautiful ! but on the verge, 640 

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn. 

An Iris sits, amidst the infernal surge, 

Like hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn 

Its steady dies, while all around is torn 

By the distracted waters, bears serene 645 



GHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 91 

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn : 
Resembling, 'mid the torture of the scene, 
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. 

LXXIII 

Once more upon the woody Apennine, 

The infant Alps, which — had I not before 650 

Gazed on their mightier parents, where the pine 

Sits on more shaggy summits, and where roar 

The thundering lauwine — might be worshipped 

more; 
But I have seen the soaring Jungfrau rear 
Her never-trodden snow,° and seen the hoar 655 

Glaciers of bleak Mont Blanc both far and near, 
And in Chimari heard the thunder-hills of fear, 

LXXIV 

Th' Acroceraunian° mountains of old name ; 
And on Parnassus seen the eagles fly 
Like spirits of the spot, as 'twere for fame, 660 

For still they soared unutterably high : 
I've looked on Ida with a Trojan's eye ; 
Athos, Olympus, ^Etna, Atlas, made 
These hills seem things of lesser dignity, 
All, save the lone Soracte's height, displayed 665 

Not now in snow, which asks the lyric Roman's^ aid 

LXXV 

For our remembrance, and from out the plain 
Heaves like a long-swept wave about to break, 
And on the curl hangs pausing : not in vain 



92 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL ' 

May he, who will, his recollections rake, 670 

And quote in classic raptures, and awake 
The hills with Latian echoes ; I abhorred 
Too much, to conquer for the poet's sake, 
The drilled dull lesson, forced down word by word 
In my repugnant youth, with pleasure to record 675 

LXXVI I 

Aught that recalls the daily drug which turned ■ 
My sickening memory; and, though Time hath 

taught 
My mind to meditate what then it learned, 
Yet such the fixed inveteracy wrought 
By the impatience of my early thought, 680 

That, with the freshness wearing out before 
My mind could relish what it might have sought 
If free to choose, I cannot now restore 
Its health ; but what it then detested, still abhor. 

LXXVII 

Then farewell, Horace, whom I hated so, 685 

Not for thy faults, but mine ; it is a curse 
To understand, not feel thy lyric flow. 
To comprehend, but never love thy verse ; 
Although no deeper moralist rehearse 
Our little life, nor bard prescribe his art, 690 

Nor livelier Satirist the conscience pierce. 
Awakening without wounding the touched heart, 
Yet fare thee well — upon Soracte's ridge we part. 



I 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 93 



LXXVIII 

Oh Rome, my country, City of the soul ! 
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 695 

Lone mother of dead empires ! and control 
In their shut breasts their petty misery, 
What are our woes and sufferance ? Come and see 
The cypress, hear the owl, and plod your way 
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples. Ye ! 700 
Whose agonies are evils of a day — 
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. 

LXXIX 

The Niobe° of nations I there she stands 
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe; 
An empty urn within her withered hands, 705 

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago ; 
The Scipios' tomb contains no ashes now; 
The very sepulchres lie tenantless 
Of their heroic dwellers : dost thou flow. 
Old Tiber ! through a marble wilderness ? 710 

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. 

LXXX 

The Goth, the Christian, Time, War, Flood, and 

Fire, 
Have dwelt upon the seven-hilled city's pride: 
She saw her glories star by star expire, 
And up the steep barbarian monarchs ride, 715 

Where the car climbed the Capitol; far and wide 



94 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Temple and tower went down, nor left a site : 
Chaos of ruins! who shall trace the void, 
O'er the dim fragments cast a lunar light. 
And say, 'here was, or is,' where all is doubly night? 720 

LXXXI 

The double night of ages, and of her. 
Night's daughter. Ignorance, hath wrapt and wrap 
All round us; we but feel our way to err: 
The ocean hath his chart, the stars their map. 
And Knowledge spreads them on her ample lap; 725 
But Rome is as the desert, where we steer 
Stumbling o'er recollections; now we clap 
Our hands, and cry ' Eureka ' ! it is clear — 
When but some false mirage of ruin rises near. 

LXXXII 

Alas, the lofty city! and alas, 730 

The trebly hundred triumphs! and the day 
When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass 
The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away! 
Alas, for TuUy's voice, and Virgil's lay. 
And Livy's pictured page! but these shall be 735 

Her resurrection; all beside- — decay. 
Alas, for Earth, for never shall we see 
That brightness in her eye she bore when Rome was 
free! 

LXXXIII 

Oh thou, whose chariot rolled on Fortune's wheel, 
Triumphant Sylla°! Thou, who didst subdue 740 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 95 

Thy country's foes ere thou wouldst pause to feel 
The wrath of thy own wrongs, or reap the due 
Of hoarded vengeance till thine eagles flew 
O'er prostrate x4sia; — thou, who with thy frown 
Annihilated senates — Roman, too, 745 

With all thy vices, for thou didst lay down 
With an atoning smile a more than earthly crown — 



LXXXIV 

The dictatorial wreath, — couldst thou divine 
To what would one day dwindle that which made 
Thee more than mortal ? and that so supine 750 

By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid ? 
She who was named eternal, and arrayed 
Her warriors but to conquer — she who veiled 
Earth with her haughty shadow, and displayed, 
Until the o'er-canopied horizon failed, 755 

Her rushing wings — Oh, she who was Almighty hailed ! 

LXXXV 

Sylla was first of victors ; but our own. 
The sagest of usurpers, Cromwell ! — he 
Too swept off senates while he hewed the throne 
Down to a block — immortal rebel ! See 760 

What crimes it costs to be a moment free. 
And famous through all ages ! but beneath 
His fate the moral lurks of destiny ; 
His day° of double victory and death 
Beheld him win two realms, and happier, yield his 
breath. ■ 765 



96 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

LXXXVI 

The third of the same moon whose former course 
Had all but crowned him, on the selfsame day 
Deposed him gentl}^ from his throne of force, 
And laid him with the earth's preceding clay. 
And showed not Fortune thus how fame and sway, 
And all we deem delightful, and consume 771 

Our souls to compass through each arduous way. 
Are in her eyes less happy than the tomb ? 
Were they but so in man's how different were his 
doom ! 

LXXXVII 

And thou, dread statue, ° yet existent in 775 

The austerest form of naked majesty. 
Thou who beheldest, 'mid the assassin's din, ^ 
At thy bathed base the bloody Caesar lie, 
Folding his robe in dying dignity, 
An offering to thine altar from the queen 780 

Of gods and men, great Nemesis° ! did he die, 
And thou, too, perish, Pompey? have ye been 
Victors of countless kings, or puppets of a scene ? 

LXXXVIII 

And thou, the thunder-striken nurse° of Rome ! 
She-wolf ! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart 785 

The milk of conquest yet within the dome 
Where, as a monument of antique art. 
Thou standest : — Mother of the mighty heart, 
Which the great founder sucked from thy wild teat. 
Scorched by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart, 790 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 97 

And thy limbs black with hghtning — dost thou yet 
Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge for- 
get? 

LXXXIX 

Thou dost ; but all thy foster-babes are dead — 

The men of iron ; and the world hath reared 

Cities from out their sepulchres : men bled 795 

In imitation of the things they feared, 

And fought and conquered, and the same course 

steered. 
At apish distance ; but as yet none have, 
Nor could, the same supremacy have neared, 
Save one vain man,° who is not in the grave, 800 
But, vanquished by himself, to his own slaves a slave — 

xc 

The fool of false dominion — and a kind 
Of bastard Csesar, following him of old 
With steps unequal ; for the Roman's mind 
Was modelled in a less terrestrial mould, 805 

With passions fiercer, yet a judgment cold. 
And an immortal instinct which redeemed 
The frailties of a heart so soft, yet bold, 
Alcides with the distaff° now he seemed 
At Cleopatra's feet, — and now himself he beamed, 8io 

xci 

And came — and saw — and conquered ! But the 

man 
Who would have tamed his eagles down to flee, 



98 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Like a trained falcon, in the Gallic van, 
Which he, in sooth, long led to victory, 
With a deaf heart, which never seemed to be 815 

A listener to itself, was strangely framed ; 
With but one weakest weakness — vanity, 
Coquettish in ambition, still he aimed — 
At what ? can he avouch or answer what he claimed ? 



XCII 

And would be all or nothing — nor could wait 820 
For the sure grave to level him ; few years 
Had fixed him with the Caesars in his fate, 
On whom we tread : For this the conqueror rears 
The arch of triumph ; and for this the tears 
And blood of earth flow on as they have flowed, 825 
An universal deluge, which appears 
Without an ark for wretched man's abode. 
And ebbs but to reflow! Renew thy rainbow, God! 

XCIII 

What from this barren being do we reap ? 
Our senses narrow, and our reason frail, 830 

Life short, and truth a gem which loves the deep, 
And all things weighed in custom's falsest scale° ; 
Opinion an omnipotence, — whose veil 
Mantles the earth with darkness, until right 
And wrong are accidents, and men grow pale 835 

Lest their own judgments should become too bright, 
And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too 
much light. 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 99 



XCIV 

And thus they plod in sluggish misery, 
Rotting from sire to son, and age to age. 
Proud of their trampled nature, and so die, 840 

Bequeathing their hereditary rage 
To the new race of inborn slaves, who wage 
War for their chains, ° and rather than be free, 
Bleed gladiator-like, and still engage 
Within the same arena where they see 845 

Their fellows fall before, like leaves of the same tree. 

xcv 

I speak not of men's creeds — they rest between 
Man and his Maker — but of things allowed. 
Averred, and known, and daily, hourly seen — 
The yoke that is upon us doubly bowed, 850 

And the intent of tyranny avowed, 
The edict of Earth's rulers, who are grown 
The apes of him who humbled once the proud, 
And shook them from their slumbers on the throne ; 
Too glorious, were this all his mighty arm had done. 855 

xcvi 

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquered be. 

And Freedom find no champion and no child 

Such as Columbia° saw arise when she 

Sprung forth a Pallas, armed and undefiled? 

Or must such minds be nourished in the wild, 860 

Deep in the unpruned forest 'midst the roar 

Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled 



100 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

On infant Washington" ? Has Earth no more 
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no such shore ? 

XCVII 

But France got drunk° with blood to vomit crime, 
And fatal have her Saturnalia been 866 

To Freedom's cause, in every age and clime ; 
Because the deadly days which we have seen, 
And vile Ambition, that built up between 
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, 870 

And the base pageant last upon the scene. 
Are grown the pretext for the eternal thrall 
Which nips life's tree, and dooms man's worst — his 
second fall. 

XCVIII 

Yet, Freedom ! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, 
Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind ; 875 
Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying, 
The loudest still the tempest leaves behind ; 
Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind. 
Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth. 
But the sap lasts, — and still the seed we find 880 
Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North ; 
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth. 

xcix 

There is a stern round tower° of other days. 

Firm as a fortress, with its fence of stone, 

Such as an army's baffled strength delays, 885 

Standing with half its battlements alone, 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 101 

And with two thousand years of ivy grown, 
The garland of eternity, where wave 
The green leaves over all by time o'erthrown : — 
What was this tower of strength ? within its cave 890 
What treasure lay so locked, so hid ? — A woman's 
grave. 

c 

But who was she, the lady of the dead, 
Tombed in a palace ? Was she chaste and fair ? 
Worthy a king's or more — a Roman's bed ? 
What race of chiefs and heroes did she bear ? 895 

What daughter of her beauties was the heir ? 
How lived, how loved, how died she ? Was she not 
So honoured — and conspicuously there. 
Where meaner relics must not dare to rot, 
Placed to commemorate a more than mortal lot ? 900 

CI 

Was she as those who love their lords, or they 
Who love the lords of others ? such have been 
Even in the olden time, Rome's annals say. 
Was she a matron of Cornelia's mien, 
Or the light air of Egypt's graceful queen, 905 

Profuse of joy — or 'gainst it did she war. 
Inveterate in virtue ? Did she lean 
To the soft side of the heart, or wisely bar 
Love from amongst her griefs ? — for such the affec- 
tions are. 

CII 

Perchance she died in youth ; it may be, bowed 9io 
With woes far heavier than the ponderous tomb 



102 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

That weighed upon her gentle dust, a cloud 
Might gather o'er her beauty, and a gloom 
In her dark eye, prophetic of the doom 
Heaven gives its favourites — early death ; yet 
shed 915 

A sunset charm around her, and illume 
With hectic light, the Hesperus of the dead. 
Of her consuming cheek the autumnal leaf-like red. 

cm 

Perchance she died in age — surviving all. 
Charms, kindred, children — with the silver gray 920 
On her long tresses, which might yet recall. 
It may be, still a something of the day 
When they were braided, and her proud array 
And lovely form were envied, praised, and eyed 
By Rome — But whither would Conjecture stray? 
Thus much alone we know — Metella died, 926 

The wealthiest Roman's wife : Behold his loye or 
pride ! 

CIV 

I know not why — but standing thus by thee 
It seems as if I had thine inmate known, 
Thou Tomb, and other days come back to me 930 
With recollected music, though the tone 
Is changed and solemn, like a cloudy groan 
Of dying thunder on the distant wind ; 
Yet could I seat me by this ivied stone° 
Till I had bodied forth the heated mind 935 

Forms from the floating wreck which Ruin leaves 
behind ; 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 103 



CV 

And from the planks, far shattered o'er the rocks, 
Built me a little bark of hope, once more 
To battle with the ocean and the shocks 
Of the loud breakers, and the ceaseless roar 940 

Which rushes on the solitary shore 
Where all lies foundered that was ever dear : 
But could I gather from the wave-worn store 
Enough for my rude boat, where should I steer ? 
There woos no home, nor hope, nor life, save what is 
here. 945 

CVI 

Then let the winds howl on ! their harmony 
Shall henceforth be my music, and the night 
The sound shall temper with the owlets' cry 
As I now hear them, in the fading light 
Dim o'er the bird of darkness' native site, 950 

Answering each other on the Palatine, 
With their large eyes, all glistening gray and bright, 
And sailing pinions. — Upon such a shrine 
What are our petty griefs ? — let me not number mine. 

CVII 

Cypress and ivy, weed and wallflower grown 955 

Matted and massed together, hillocks heaped 

On what were chambers, arch crushed, column 

strown 
In fragments, choked up vaults, and frescos steeped 
In subterranean damps, where the owl peeped, 
Deeming it midnight : — Temples, baths, or halls ? 



104 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Pronounce who can ; for all that Learning reaped 961 

From her research hath been, that these are walls — 

Behold the Imperial Mount ! 'tis thus the mighty falls. 



CVIII 

There is the moral of all human tales ; 
'Tis })ut the same rehearsal of the past, 965 

First freedom and then glory — when that fails, 
Wealth, vice, corruption, — barbarism at last. 
And History, with all her volumes vast. 
Hath but one page — 'tis better written here. 
Where gorgeous Tyranny hath thus amassed 970 

All treasures, all delights, that e3^e or ear. 
Heart, soul could seek, tongue ask — Away with words 
— draw near, 

cix 

Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep, — for here 
There is such matter for all feeling : — Man, 
Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear ! 975 

Ages and realms are crowded in this span, 
This mountain, whose o])literated plan 
The pyramid of empires pinnacled, 
Of Glory's gewgaws shining in the van 
Till the sun's rays with added flame were filled ! 980 
Where are its golden roofs ? Where those who dared to 
build? 

ex 

Tully was not so eloquent as thou, 

Thou nameless column with the buried base! 



CHILD E HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 105 

What are the laurels of the Caesar's brow ? 
Crown me with ivy from his dwelling-place. 985 

Whose arch or pillar meets me in the face, 
Titus or Trajan's ? No — 'tis that of Time ; 
Triumph, arch, pillar, all he doth displace 
Scoffing ; and apostolic statues° climb 989 

To crush the imperial urn, whose ashes slept sublime, 



CXI 

Buried in air, the deep blue sky of Rome, 
And looking to the stars : they had contained 
A spirit which with these would find a home. 
The last of those who o'er the whole earth reigned, 
The Roman globe, for after none sustained, 995 

But yielded ]3ack his conquests : — he was more 
Than a mere Alexander, and unstained 
With household blood° and wine, serenely wore 
His sovereign virtues — still we Trajan's name adore. 

CXII 

Where is the rock of Triumph, the high place looo 

Where Rome embraced her heroes ? where the steep 
Tarpeian, fittest goal of Treason's race. 
The promontory whence the Traitor's Leap 
Cured all ambition ? Did the conquerors heap 
Their spoils here ? Yes ; and in yon field below 1005 
A thousand years of silenced factions sleep — 
The Forum, where the immortal accents glow. 
And still the eloquent air breathes — burns with 
Cicero ! 



106 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



CXIII 

The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood : 
Here a proud people's passions were exhaled, loio 
From the first hour of empire in the bud 
To that when further worlds to conquer failed ; 
But long before had Freedom's face been veiled, 
And Anarchy assumed her attributes ; 
Till every lawless soldier who assailed 1015 

Trod on the trembling senate's slavish mutes, 
Or raised the venal voice of baser prostitutes. 



cxiv 

Then turn we to her latest tribune's name, 
From her ten thousand tyrants turn to thee, 
Redeemer of dark centuries of shame — 1020 

The friend of Petrarch — hope of Italy — 
Rienzi,° last of Romans ! While the tree 
Of freedom's withered trunk puts forth a leaf, 
Even for thy tomb a garland let it be — • 
The forum's champion, and the people's chief — 1025 
Her new-born Numa thou — with reign, alas ! too 
brief. 

cxv 

Egeria,° sweet creation of some heart 

Which found no mortal resting-place so fair 

As thine ideal breast ! whate'er thou art 

Or wert, — a young Aurora of the air, 1030 

The nympholepsy° of some fond despair ; 

Or, it might be, a beauty of the earth, 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 107 

Who found a more than common votary there 
Too much adoring ; whatsoe'er thy birth, 1034 

Thou wert a beautiful thought, and softly bodied forth. 

cxvi 

The mosses of thy fountain still are sprinkled 
With thine Elysian water-drops ; the face 
Of thy cave-guarded spring, with years unwrinkled, 
Reflects the meek-eyed genius of the place, 
Whose green, wild margin now^ no more erase 1040 
Art's works ; nor must the delicate waters sleep, 
Prisoned in marble ; bubbling from the base 
Of the cleft statue, with a gentle leap 
The rill runs o'er, and round, fern, flowers, and ivy creep, 

CXVII 

Fantastically tangled ; the green hills 1045 

Are clothed with early blossoms, through the grass 
The quick-eyed lizarcl rustles, and the bills 
Of summer-birds sing welcome as ye pass ; 
Flowers fresh in hue, and many in their class. 
Implore the pausing step, and with their dies 1050 
Dance in the soft breeze in a iairy mass ; 
The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes. 
Kissed by the breath of heaven, seems coloured by its 
skies. 

CXVIII 

Here didst thou dwell, in this enchanted cover, 
Egeria, thy all heavenly bosom beating 1055 

For the far footsteps of thy mortal lover ! 



108 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

The purple Midnight veiled that mystic meeting 
With her most starry canopy, and seating 
Thyself by thine adorer, what befell ? 
This cave was surely shaped out for the greeting 106O 
Of an enamoured Goddess, and the cell 
Haunted by holy Love — the earliest oracle ! 



CXIX 

And didst thou not, thy breast to his replying, 
Blend a celestial with a human heart ; 
And Love, which dies as it was born, in sighing, 1065 
Share with immortal transports ? could thine art 
Make them indeed immortal, and impart 
The purity of heaven to earthly joys, 
Expel the venom and not blunt the dart — 
The dull satiety which all destroys — 1070 

And root from out the soul the deadly weed which cloys. 



cxx 

Alas ! our young affections run to waste, 
Or water but the desert ; whence arise 
But weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste, 
Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes, 1075 
Flowers whose wild odours breathe but agonies, 
And trees whose gums are poison ; such the plants 
Which spring beneath her steps as Passion flies 
O'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pants 
For some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants. loso 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 109 



CXXI 

Oh Love, no habitant of earth thou art — 
An unseen seraph, we beheve in thee, — 
A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart, — 
But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall see 
The naked eye, thy form, as it should be ; 1085 

The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heaven, 
Even with its own desiring phantasy, 
And to a thought such shape and image given, 
As haunts the unquenched soul — parched, wearied, 
• wrung, and riven. 

CXXII 

Of its own beauty is the mind diseased, 1090 

And fevers into false creation. Where, 
Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized ? 
In him alone. Can nature show so fair ? 
Where are the charms and virtues which we dare 
Conceive in boyhood and pursue as men, 1095 

The unreached Paradise of our despair, 
Which o'er-informs the pencil and the pen, 
And overpowers the page where it would bloom again ? 

CXXIII 

Who loves, raves — 'tis youth's frenzy — but the 

cure 
Is bitterer still, as charm by charm unwinds 1100 

Which robed our idols, and we see too sure 
Nor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind's 



110 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Ideal shape of such ; yet still it binds 
The fatal spell, and still it draws us on, 
Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds; ii05 
The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun. 
Seems ever near the prize — wealthiest when most un- 
done. 

cxxiv 

We wither from our j^outh, we gasp away — 
Sick — sick ; unfound the boon, unslak'd the thirst, 
Though to the last, in verge of our decay, iiio 

Some phantom lures, such as we sought at first — 
But all too late, — so are we doubly curst. 
Love, fame, ambition, avarice — 'tis the same, 
Each idle, and all ill, and none the worst — 
For all are meteors with a different name, 1115 

And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame. 



cxxv 

Few — none — find what they love or could have 

loved. 
Though accident, blind contact, and the strong 
Necessity of loving, have removed 
Antipathies — but to recur, ere long, 1120 

Envenomed with irrevocable wrong ; 
And Circumstance, that unspiritual god 
And miscreator, makes and helps along 
Our coming evils with a crutch-hke rod, 1124 

Whose touch turns hope to dust, — the dust we all have 

trod. 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 111 



CXXVI 

Our life is a false nature° : 'tis not in 
The harmony of things, — this hard decree, 
This uneradicable taint of sin, 
This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree, 
Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches be ii30 
The skies which rain their plagues on men like dew — 
Disease, death, bondage — all the woes we see, 
And worse, the woes we see not — which throb 
through 
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new. 

CXXVII 

Yet let us ponder boldly — 'tis a base 1135 

Abandonment of reason to resign 
Our right of thought — our last and only place 
Of refuge : this at least, shall still be mine : 
Though from our birth the faculty divine 
Is chained and tortured ■ — cabined, cribbed, con- 
fined, 1140 
And bred in darkness, lest the truth should shine 
Too brightly on the unprepared mind. 
The beam pours in, for time and skill will couch° the 
blind. 

CXXVIII 

Arches on arches ! as it were that Rome, 

Collecting the chief trophies of her line, 1145 

Would build up all her triumphs in one dome. 

Her Coliseum° stands ; the moonbeams shine 

As 'twere its natural torches, for divine 



112 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Should be the hght which streams here, to illume 
This long-explored but still exhaustless mine 1150 

Of contemj5lation ; and the azure gloom 
Of an Italian night, where the deep skies assume 

CXXIX 

Hues which have words, and speak to ye of heaven, 
Floats o'er this vast and wondrous monument. 
And shadows forth its glory. There is given 1155' 
Unto the things of earth, which time hath bent, 
A spirit's feeling, and where he hath leant 
His hand, h\ii broke his scythe, there is a power 
And magic in the ruined battlement. 
For which the palace of the present hour ii( 

Must yield its pomp, and wait till ages are its dower. 

cxxx 

Oh Time, the beautifier of the dead, 
Adorner of the ruin, comforter 
And only healer when the heart hath bled ! — 
Time ! the corrector where our judgments err, 116^ 
The test of truth, love — sole philosopher. 
For all beside are sophists — from thy thrift, 
Which never loses though it doth defer — 
Time, the avenger ! unto thee I lift 11 69 

My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift : 

cxxxi 

Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine 
And temple more divinely desolate, 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 113 

Among thy mightier offerings here are mine, 
Ruin^ of years, though few, yet full of fate : 
If thou hast ever seen me too elate, 1175 

Hear me not ; but if calmly I have borne 
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate 
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn 
This iron in my soul in vain — shall they not mourn ? 



CXXXII 

And thou, who never yet of human wrong 118O 

Left the unbalanced scale, great Nemesis ! 
Here, where the ancient paid thee homage long — 
Thou, who didst call the Furies from the abyss, 
And round Orestes° bade them howl and hiss 
For that unnatural retribution — just, 1185 

Had it but been from hands less near — in this 
Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust ! 
Dost thou not hear my heart ? — Awake ! thou shalt, 
and must. 

CXXXIII 

It is not that I may not have incurred 
For my ancestral faults or mine the wound 1190 

I bleed withal, and had it been conferred 
With a just weapon, it had flowed unbound; 
But now my blood shall not sink in the ground : 
To thee I do devote it — thou shalt take 
The vengeance, which shall yet be sought and found 
Which if I have not taken for the sake — 1196 

But let that pass — I sleep, but thou shalt yet awake. 



114 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



CXXXIV 

And if my voice break forth, 'tis not that now 
I shrink from what is suffered : let him speak 
Who hath beheld decline upon my brow, 1200 

Or seen my mind's convulsion leave it weak ; 
But on this page a record will I seek. 
Not in the air shall these my words disperse, 
Though I be ashes ; a far hour shall wreak 
The deep prophetic fulness of this verse, 1205 

And pile on human heads the mountains of my curse ! 

cxxxv 

That curse shall be Forgiveness, ° — Have I not — 
Hear me, my mother Earth ! behold it, Heaven ! — 
Have I not had to wrestle with my lot ? 
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven ? 1210 

Have I not had my brains seared, my heart riven, 
Hopes sapped, name blighted. Life's life lied away ? 
And only not to desperation driven, 
Because not altogether of such clay 
As rots into the souls of those whom I survej^ 1215 

CXXXVI 

From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy 

Have I not seen what human things could do ? 

From the loud roar of foaming calumny 

To the small whisper of the as paltry few, 

And subtler venom of the reptile crew, 1220 

The Janus° glance of whose significant eye, 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 115 

Learning to lie with silence, would seem true, 
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, 
Deal round to happy fools its speechless obloquy. 

CXXXVII 

But I have lived, and have not lived in vain : 1225 
My mind may lose its force, my blood its fire, 
And my frame perish even in conquering pain ; 
But there is that within me which shall tire 
Torture and Time, and breathe when I expire ; 
Something unearthly, which they deem not of, 1230 
Like the remembered tone of a mute lyre, 
Shall on their softened spirits sink, and move 
In hearts all rocky now the late remorse of love. 

CXXXVIII 

The seal is set. — Now welcome, thou dread power, 
Nameless, yet thus omnipotent, which here 1235 

Walkest in the shadow of the midnight hour 
With a deep awe, yet all distinct from fear ! 
Thy haunts are ever where the dead walls rear 
Their ivy mantles, and the solemn scene 
Derives from thee a sense so deep and clear 1240 

That we become a part of what has been, 
And grow unto the spot, all-seeing but unseen. 

CXXXIX 

And here the buzz of eager nations ran. 

In murmured pity, or loud-roared applause. 

As man was slaughtered by his fellow man. 1245 



116 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

And wherefore slaughtered ? wherefore, but because 
Such were the bloody Circus' genial laws, 
And the imperial pleasure. — Wherefore not ? 
What matters where we fall to fill the maws 
Of worms, — on battle-plains or listed spot ? 1250 

Both are but theatres where the chief actors rot. 



m 



CXL 

I see before me the Gladiator° lie : 
He leans upon his hands — his manly brow 
Consents to death, but conquers agony, 
And his drooped head sinks gradually low — 1255 
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, 
Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now 
The arena swims around him — he is gone, 
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch 
who won. 1260 

CXLI 

He heard it, but he heeded not — his eyas 
Were with his heart, and that was far away ; 
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, 
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, 
There were his young barbarians all at play, 1265 

There was their Dacian mother — he, their sire, 
Butchered to make a Roman holiday — 
All this rushed with his blood — Shall he expire 
And unavenged ? Arise ! ye Goths, and glut your ire ! 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 117 



CXLII 

But here, where Murder breathed her bloody steam ; 
And here, where buzzing nations choked the ways, 1271 
And roared or murmured hke a mountain stream 
Dashing or winding as its torrent strays ; 
Here, where the Roman milhons' blame or praise° 
Was death or life, the playthings of a crowd, 1275 
My voice sounds much — and fall the stars' faint rays° 
On the arena void — seats crushed — walls bowed — 
And galleries, where my steps seem echoes strangely 
loud. 

CXLIII 

A ruin — yet what ruin ! — from its mass 
Walls, palaces, half-cities, have been reared ; 128O 

Yet oft the enormous skeleton ye pass. 
And marvel where the spoil could have appeared. 
Hath it indeed been plundered, or but cleared ? 
Alas ! developed, opens the decay. 
When the colossal fabric's form is neared : 1285 

It will not bear the brightness of the day. 
Which streams too much to all years, man, have reft 
away. 

CXLIV 

But when the rising moon begins to climb 

Its topmost arch, and gently pauses there ; 

When the stars twinkle through the loops of time, 1290 

And the low night-breeze waves along the air 

The garland-forest, which the gray walls wear, 

Like laurels on the bald first Caesar's head ; 



118 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

When the hght shines serene but doth not glare, 
Then in this magic circle raise the dead : 1295 

Heroes have trod this spot — 'tis on their dust ye tread. 

CXLV 

' While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand ; 

When falls the C'oliseum, Rome shall fall, 

And when Rome falls — the World.' From our own 

land 
Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall 1300 
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call 
Ancient ; and these three mortal things are still i 
On their foundations, and unaltered all ; f 

Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill, 
The World, the same wide den — of thieves, or what ye 

will. 1305 



CXLVI 

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime — 
Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods. 
From Jove to Jesus — spared and blessed by time ; 
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods 1309 

Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods 
His way through thorns to ashes — glorious dome ! 
Shalt thou not last ? Time's scythe and tyrants' rod 
Shiver upon thee — sanctuary and home 
Of art and piety — Pantheon° ! — pride of Rome ! 

CXLVII 

Relic of nobler days, and noblest arts ! 1315 

Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads 



CHILBE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 119 

A holiness appealing to all hearts — 
To art a model ; and to him who treads 
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds 
Her light through thy sole aperture° ; to those 1320 
Who worship, here are altars for their beads ; 
And they who feel for genius may repose 
Their eyes on honoured forms, whose busts around them 
close. 

CXLVIII 

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light 
What do I gaze on ? Nothing : Look again ! 1325 
Two forms° are slowly shadowed on my sight — 
Two insulated phantoms of the brain : 
It is not so; I see them full and plain — 
An old man, and a female young and fair, 
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein 1330 

The blood is nectar : — But what doth she there, 
With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare ? 

CXLIX 

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, 
Where on the heart and from the heart we took 
Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, 1335 
Blest into mother, in the innocent look, 
Or even the piping cry of lips that brook 
No pain, and small suspense, a joy perceives 
Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook 
She sees her little bud put forth its leaves — 1340 
What may the fruit be yet ? — I know not — Cain was 
Eve's. 



120 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



CL 

But here youth offers to old age the food, 
The milk of his own gift : it is her sire 
To whom she renders back the debt of blood 
Born with her birth. No ; he shall not expire 1345 
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire 
Of health and holy feeling can provide 
Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher 
Than Egypt's river : from that gentle side 
Drink, drink and live, old man ! Heaven's realm holds 
no such tide. 1350 

CLI 

The starry fable° of the milky way 
Has not thy story's purity : it is 
A constellation of a sweeter ray. 
And sacred Nature triumphs more in this 
Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss 1355 

Where sparkle distant worlds : — Oh, holiest nurse ! 
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss 
To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source 
With fife, as our freed souls rejoin the universe. 

CLII 

Turn to the mole° which Hadrian reared on high, 

Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles, 1361 

Colossal copyist of deformity, 

Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's 

Enormous model, doomed the artist's toils 

To build for giants, and for his vain earth, 1365 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 121 

His shrunken ashes, raised his doom : How smiles 
The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth, 
To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth ! 

CLIII 

But lo ! the dome° — the vast and wondrous dome, 
To which Diana's marvel° was a cell — 1370 

Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb ! 
I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle ; — 
Its columns strew the wilderness, and dwell 
The hyaena and the jackal in their shade ; 
I have beheld Sophia's° bright roofs swell 1375 

Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have surveyed 
Its sanctuary the while the usurping Moslem prayed ; 

CLIV 

But thou, of temples old, or altars new, 
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee — 
Worthiest of God the holy and the true. 1380 

Since Zion's desolation, ° when that He 
Forsook his former city, what could be, 
Of earthly structures, in his honour piled. 
Of a sublimer aspect ? Majesty, 
Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty all are aisled 1385 
In this eternal ark of worship undefiled. 

CLV 

Enter : its grandeur overwhelms thee not ; 
And why ? it is not lessened ; but thy mind, 
Expanded by the genius of the spot, 



122 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Has grown colossal, and can only find 1390 

A fit abode wherein appear enshrined 
Thy hopes of immortality ; and thou 
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined, 
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now 
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow. 1395 



CLVI 

Thou movest, but increasing with the advance, 
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise. 
Deceived by its gigantic elegance ; 
Vastness which grows, but grows to harmonise — 
All musical in its immensities ; 1400 

Rich marbles, richer painting — shrines where flame 
The lamps of gold — and haughty dome which vies 
In air with Earth's chief structures, though their 

frame 
Sits on the firm-set ground, and this the clouds must 

claim. 

CLVII 

Thou seest not all ; but piecemeal thou must break. 
To separate contemplation, the great whole ; 1406 

And as the ocean man}^ bays will make 
That ask the eye — so here condense thy soul 
To more immediate objects, and control 
Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart 1410 
Its eloquent proportions, and unroll 
In mighty graduations, part by part, 
The glory which at once upon thee did not dart, 



CHILD E HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 123 



CLVIII 

Not by its fault — but thine : Our outward sense 
Is but of gradual grasp — and as it is 1415 

That what we have of feeling most intense 
Outstrips our faint expression : even so this 
Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice 
Fools our fond gaze, and greatest of the great 
Defies at first our Nature's littleness, 1420 

Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate 
Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate. 



CLIX 

Then pause, and be enlightened ; there is more 

In such a survey than the sating gaze 

Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore 1425 

The worship of the place, or the mere praise 

Of art and its great masters, who could raise 

What former time, nor skill, nor thought could 

plan ; 
The fountain of sublimity displays 
Its depth, and thence may draw the mind of man 1430 
Its golden sands, and learn what great conceptions can. 



CLX 

Or, turning to the Vatican, go see 

Laocoon's torture° dignifying pain — 

A father's love and mortal's agony 

With an immortal patience blending: Vain 1435 

The struggle ; vain, against the coiling strain 



124 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, 
The old man's clench ; the long envenomed chain 
Rivets the living links, — the enormous asp 
Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp. 1440 

CLXI 

Or view the Lord of the unerring bow,° 
The God of life, and poesy, and light — 
The sun in human limbs arrayed, and brow 
All radiant from his triumph in the fight ; 
The shaft hath just been shot — the arrow bright 
With an immortal's vengeance ; in his eye 1446 

And nostril beautiful disdain, and might 
And majesty, flash their full lightnings by, 
Developing in that one glance the Deity. 

* 

CLXII 

But in his delicate form — a dream of Love, 1450 
Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose breast 
Longed for a deathless lover from above. 
And maddened in that vision — are exprest 
All that ideal beauty ever blessed 
The mind with, in its most unearthly mood, 1455 
When each conception was a heavenly guest — 
A ray of immortahty — and stood. 
Starlike, around, until they gathered to a god ! 

CLXIII 

And if it be Prometheus stole from Heaven 

The fire which we endure, it was repaid 1460 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 125 

By him to whom the energy was given 
Which this poetic marble hath arrayed 
With an eternal glory — which, if made 
By human hands, is not of human thought ; 
And Time himself hath hallowed it, nor laid 1465 

One ringlet in the dust — nor hath it caught 
A tinge of years, but breathes the flame with which 
'twas wrought. 

CLXIV 

But where is he, the Pilgrim° of my song, 
The being who upheld it through the past ? 
Methinks he cometh late and tarries long. 1470 

He is no more — these breathings are his last ; 
His wanderings done, his visions ebbing fast, 
And he himself is nothing : — if he was 
Aught but a phantasy, and could be classed 
With forms which live and suffer — let that pass° — 
His shadow fades away into Destruction's mass, 1476 

CLXV 

Which gathers shadow, substance, life, and all 

That we inherit in its mortal shroud. 

And spreads the dim and universal pall 

Through which all things grow phantoms; and the 

cloud 1480 

Between us sinks and all which ever glowed, 
Till Glory's self is twilight, and displays 
A melancholy halo scarce allowed. 
To hover on the verge of darkness ; rays 14S4 

Sadder than saddest night, for they distract the gaze. 



126 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

CLXVI 

And send us prying into the abyss, 
To gather what we shall be when the frame 
Shall be resolved to something less than this 
Its wretched essence ; and to dream of fame, 
And wipe the dust from off the idle name 1490 

We never more shall hear, — but never more, 
Oh, happier thought ! can we be made the same : 
It is enough in sooth that once we bore 
These fardels of the heart — the heart whose sweat 
was gore. 

CLXVII 

Hark — forth from the abyss a voice° proceeds, 1495 
A long low distant murmur of dread sound, 
Such as arises when a nation bleeds 
With some deep and immedicable wound; 
Through storm and darkness yawns the rending 

ground. 
The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief 1500 
Seems royal still, though with her head discrowned. 
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief 
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief. 

CLXVIII 

Scion of chiefs and monarchs, where art thou ? 
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead ? 1505 

Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low 
Some less majestic, less beloved head? 
In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled, 
The mother of a moment, o'er thy boy. 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 127 

Death hushed that pang for ever : with thee fled i5io 
The present happiness and promised joy 
Which filled the imperial isles so full it seemed to cloy. 

CLXIX 

Peasants bring forth in safety. — Can it be, 
Oh thou that wert so happy, so adored, 
Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee, 1515 
And freedom's heart grown heavy, cease to hoard 
Her many griefs for One ! for she had poured 
Her orisons for thee, and o'er thy head 
Beheld her Iris. — Thou, too, lonelj^ lord. 
And desolate consort — vainly wert thou wed ! 1520 
The husband of a year ! the father of the dead ! 

CLXX 

Of sackcloth was thy wedding garment made ; 
Thy bridal's fruit is ashes : in the dust 
The fair haired Daughter of the Isles is laid. 
The love of milhons ! How we did entrust 1525 

Futurity to her ; and, though it must 
Darken above our bones, yet fondly deemed 
Our children should obey her child, and blessed 
Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seemed 
Like stars to shepherd's eyes : — 'twas but a meteor 
beamed. 1530 

CLXXI 

Woe unto us, not her ; for she sleeps well : 
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue 



128 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Of hollow counsel, the false oracle, 
Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung 
Its knell in princely ears, till the o'erstung 1535 

Nations have armed in madness, the strange fate 
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung 
Against their blind omnipotence a weight 
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late, — 



CLXXII 

These might have been her destiny ; but no, 1540 
Our hearts deny it : and so young, so fair. 
Good without effort, great without a foe. 
But now a bride and mother — and now there ! 
How many ties did that stern moment tear ! 
From thy Sire's to his humblest subject's breast 1545 
Is linked the electric chain of that despair. 
Whose shock was as an earthquake's, and opprest 
The land which loved thee so that none could love thee 
best. 

CLXXIII 

Lo, Nemi ! navelled in the woody hills 
So far, that the uprooting wind which tears 1550 

The oak from his foundation, and which spills 
The ocean o'er its boundary, smd bears 
Its foam against the skies, reluctant spares 
The oval mirror of thy glassy lake ; 
And calm as cherished hate, its surface wears 1555 
A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake. 
All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. 



CHILD E HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 129 



CLXXIV 

And near, Albano's scarce divided waves 
Shine from a sister valley ; — and afar 
The Tiber winds, and the broad ocean laves 1560 
The Latian coast where sprung the Epic war, 
' Arms and the man,'° whose re-ascending star 
Rose o'er an empire : — but beneath thy right 
Tully reposed from Rome ; — and where yon bar 
Of girdling mountains intercepts the sight 1565 

The Sabine farm° was tilled, ' the weary bard's ' de- 



light. 



CLXXV 



But I forget. — My Pilgrim's shrine is won, 
And he and I must part, — so let it be, — 
His task and mine alike are nearly done ; 
Yet once more let us look upon the sea; 1570 

The midland ocean breaks on him and me, 
And from the Alban Mount we now behold 
Our friend of youth, that Ocean, which when we 
Beheld it last by Calpe's rock° unfold 
Those waves, we followed on till the dark Euxine 
rolled 1575 

CLXXVT 

Upon the blue Symplegades° : long years — 
Long, though not very many — since have done 
Their work on both ; some suffering and some tears 
Have left us nearly where we had begun : 
Yet not vain our mortal race hath run ; 1580 

We have had our reward, and it is here, — 



laO POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

That we can yet feel gladdened by the sun, 

And reap from earth, sea, joy almost as dear 

As if there were no man to trouble what is clfear. 

CLXXVII 

Oh ! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, 1685 
With one fair Spirit for my minister. 
That I might all forget° the human race, 
And, hating no one, love but only her ! 
Ye elements ! — in whose ennobling stir 
I feel myself exalted — Can ye not 1590 

Accord me such a being? Do I err 
In deeming such inhabit many a spot ? 
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. 

CLXXVIII 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 1595 

There is society, where none intrudes. 
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar : 
I love not Man the less, but Nature more. 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 1600 

To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal. 

CLXXIX 

Roll on, thou deep° and dark blue Ocean — roll ! 

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 

Man marks the earth with ruin — his control 1605 



GHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 131 

Stops with the shore ; upon the watery plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain. 
He sinks into thy depths with bubbhng groan, I610 
Without a grave, unknelled, uncofiined, and unknown. 



CLXXX 

His steps are not upon thy paths, — thy fields 

Are not a spoil for him, — thou dost arise 

And shake him from thee ; the vile strength he 

wields 
For earth's destruction thou dost all despise, I615 
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies, 
And sendest him shivering in thy playful spray 
And howling, to his Gods, where haply lies 
His petty hope in some near port or bay, 1619 

And dashest him again to earth : — there let him lay.° 



CLXXXI 

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake. 
And monarchs tremble in their capitals. 
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
Their clay creator the vain title take 1625 

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war — 
These are thy toys, and as the snowy flake, 
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 
AHke the Armada's pride or spoils of Trafalgar. 



132 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



CLXXXII 

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee — 
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they ? 163 1 
Thy waters washed them power while, they were 

free, 
And many a tyrant since ; their shores obey 
The stranger, slave, or savage ! their decay 
Has dried up realms to deserts : — not so thou ; 1035 
Unchangeable, save to thy wild waves' play — 
Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow — 
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou roUest now. 

CLXXXIII 

Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, — 1640 

Calm or convulsed, in breeze or gale or storm, 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving — boundless, endless, and sublime, 
The image of eternity, the throne 
Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime 1645 

The monsters of the deep are made ; each zone 
Obeys thee ; thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. 

CLXXXIV 

And I have loved thee, Ocean°! and my joy 

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be 

Borne, like thy bubbles, onward : from a boy 1650 

I wantoned with thy breakers — they to me 

Were a delight ; and if the freshening sea 

Made them a terror — 'twas a pleasing fear, 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 133 

For I was as it were a child of thee, 
And trusted to thy billows far and near, 1655 

And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here. 

CLXXXV 

My task is done, my song has ceased, my theme 
Has died into an echo ; it is fit 
The spell should break of this protracted dream. 
The torch shall be extinguished which hath lit 1660 
My midnight lamp — and what is writ, is writ ; 
Would it were worthier ! but I am not now 
That which I have been — and my visions flit 
Less palpably before me — and the glow 1664 

Which in my spirit dwelt is fluttering, faint, and low. 

CLXXXVI 

Farewell ! a word that must be, and hath been — 
A sound which makes us linger ; — yet — farewell ! 
Ye ! who have traced the pilgrim to the scene 
Which is his last, if in your memories dwell 
A thought which once was his, if on ye swell 1670 
A single recollection, not in vain 
He wore his sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell° ; 
Farewell ! with him alone may rest the pain. 
If such there were — with you, the moral of his strain. 



NOTES 

1. 1. Venice. The present city of Venice was founded 
about the beginning of the ninth century ; but long before this 
time the site had been occupied by a people who had formed 
a republican type of government and had placed a doge, or 
duke, at its head. It was between the twelfth and fifteenth 
centuries that the state reached its brightest prosperity and 
power. In fact, the republic had become so powerful at the 
beginning of the thirteenth century that the Byzantine 
empire fell into its hands and for hundreds of years the state 
ruled over many colonies and dependencies. The city became 
wealthy through trade in salt and by means of commerce with 
the East. Its arsenal once employed 16,000 workmen and its 
naval force consisted of 200 galleys. Throughout the world 
Venice was famed for its manufactures of glass, pottery, and 
silk ; for the art of printing ; and for its cultivation of litera- 
ture, painting, and architecture. Early in the seventeenth 
century, however, indolence and luxury began to make their 
appearance ; trade with the East had ceased to pass through 
the Mediterranean, and Venice gradually declined. By 1718, 
the republic had ceased to exercise any important influence 
in European politics. On the 16th of May, 1797, Napoleon 
entered the city and proclaimed the end of the republic. 
Venice remained in the hands of France or Austria until 
the Austro-Prussian war gave her her freedom in 1866 and the 
city was joined to the Italian kingdom. 

1. 2. a palace. The ducal palace has been destroyed or 
burned a great many times. The existing structure was begun 

134 



GHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 135 

in 1300 and has been frequently enlarged or altered. The 
building contained not only the state apartments of the doge 
and the legislative chambers, but also the state prison. But 
in the sixteenth century a new prison was constructed across 
the narrow canal, Rio del Palazzo, and a gallery, usually 
known as the Bridge of Sighs, was built to connect the two 
buildings. In addition to a passage this gallery contained 
a chamber in which condemned criminals were strangled to 
death. 

1. 8. the winged Lion's. The bronze Lion of St. Mark 
became the emblem of Venice. It was cast in the city about 
1178. Together with many other Venetian treasures it 
was taken to Paris by Napoleon, but later was returned. 
Ruskin calls it one of the grandest things produced by medi- 
aeval art. 

1. 9. her hundred isles. The modern city occupies 117 
islands. 

1. 10. sea cybele. Cybele was regarded as the Earth- 
mother and th^ protectress of fortresses. She is represented 
as wearing a crown surmounted with towers. Lions either 
draw her chariot or lie by her side. 

1. 19. Tasso's echoes. The Venetian gondoliers were 
formerly accustomed to sing responsively alternate stanzas 
from Tasso's Jerusalem. 

1. 27. In 1802 Wordsworth wrote his famous sonnet On 
the Extinction of the Venetian Republic. Which do you con- 
sider to be the better, Byron's stanzas, or the version of 
Wordsworth ? 

"Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee, 
And was the safeguard of the West : the worth 
Of Venice did not fall below her birth. — 
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty. 



136 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



i 



She was a maiden City, bright and free ; 
No guile seduced, no force could violate; 
And, when she took unto herself a Mate, 
She must espouse the everlasting Sea. 
And what if she had seen those glories fade, 
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay : 
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid 
"When her long life hath reached its final day : 
Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade 
Of that which once was great is passed away." 

— William Wordsworth. 

1. 31. dogeless. The doge abdicated his office on the 
12th of May, 1797, four days before Napoleon entered the 
city and proclaimed the end of the republic. 

1. 33. Rialto. One of the islands on which Venice is 
built. The name was later applied to the Exchange building 
and its vicinity. In the latter sense the term was used by 
Shylock, the Jewish money-lender of The Merchant of Venice. 
At a time later than that of Shakespeare's play the name was 
given to the famous bridge which crosses the Grand Canal. 

1. 33. Moor. Shakespeare's Othello. 

1. 34. Pierre. A character in Otway's Venice Preserved. 

1. 69. yet I was born. Hobhouse said Byron never seemed 
at ease. When in England he wished to be abroad and when 
abroad he longed for home. 

1. 82. My name from out the temple. After Byron's 
death his relatives applied in vain for permission to inter 
his body in Westminster Abbey. 

1. 86. Sparta hath. Hobhouse says this remark was made 
by the mother of Brasidas, a Spartan general, when her son's 
memory was praised. 

I. 91. The spouseless Adriatic. On the 20th of May, 998, 
the doge Pietro Orseolo overcame a great fleet of pirates 
and made Venice supreme over the sea. To commemorate 



CniLDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 137 

this event, each year on Ascension Day were celebrated the 
espousals of the doge with the Adriatic. A ring was thrown 
into the water from the state galley, the Bucentaur. 

1. 97. Emperor. In 1177, the emperor, Frederick Bar- 
barossa, was forced to yield to Pope Alexander III. 

I. 100. The Suabian. Frederick Barbarossa. 

1. 101. An Emperor. Napoleon. 

1. 106. lauwine. Or lawine, German for avalanche. 

I. 107. The Byzantine empire fell into the hands of the 
Venetians through the capture of Constantinople in 1204. 
They were led by their doge Dandolo, who was ninety-seven 
years of age. 

1. 109. Steeds of brass. The famous horses of St. Mark's 
(long spoken of as the only horses in Venice) which were 
originally in Rome and were taken by Constantino to Con- 
stantinople, were brought to Venice by Dandolo, were taken 
to Paris by Napoleon, but were restored to Venice in 1815. 

1. 111. Doria's menace. In 1379, Peter Doria, a Genoese 
commander, threatened to bridle the horses of St. Mark's. 

1. 114. Sinks. To build foundations that will prevent 
the heavy buildings of Venice from sinking into the marshy 
soil requires great engineering skill. 

1. 123. Ottomite. The Turks were the traditional enemies 
of the Venetians. The latter defended Candia for twenty- 
four years, while the famous siege of Troy lasted but ten 
years. 

1. 125. Lepanto's fight. In 1571, with the help of Spain 
and the Pope, the Venetians defeated the Turks in a naval 
battle. 

1. 138. Some of the Athenian captives are said by Plutarch 
to have regained their freedom by singing passages from Eu- 
ripides. 



138 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

1. 158. Otway. He had probably read Venice Preserved^ 
Mysteries of Udolpho, Der Geisterseher, and The Merchant of 
Venice. 

1. 172. Tannen. German for fir trees. The following four 
stanzas are typical of Byron's poetry. 

1. 235. The moon is up. Can you visualize the scene as 
he describes it? Byron here begins a poetical account of a 
trip which he took through northern Italy in the spring of 
1817. 

1. 238. Blue Friuli's Mountains. The Julian Alps. By- 
ron's point of view is the mainland opposite Venice where 
the river Brenda flows into the sea. 

1. 244. A single star. Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
many other poets have noted the emotional effect produced 
by a single star. 

1. 259. dolphin. Not the dolphin, but a fish, the dorado, 
possesses the beautiful colors to which Byron refers. 

1. 264. Laura's lover. Petrarch, whose tomb in Arqua is 
supported on pillars. 

1. 269. the tree. The laurel. 

1. 307. Ferrara. A city eighty miles southwest of Venice. 

1. 311. Este. The house of Este ruled in Ferrara. Al- 
phonso I. was a patron of Ariosto ; and Alphonso XL, of Tor- 
quato Tasso. The latter became insane, and Alphonso, after 
long hesitation and the exercise of much commendable patience, 
ordered the poet confined in the madhouse of St. Anna. 
There is probably no truth in the story that he was impris- 
oned on account of his love for Leonora d'Este. 

1. 339. the Cruscan quire. The Academia della Crusea 
of Florence censured Tasso's Jerusalem. Boileau, the French 
critic, also found fault with the poem. 

1. 354. Bards. Dante, the Tuscan father, was the author 



CHILDE HAROLD^ S PILGRIMAGE 139 

of the Inferno, which is a part of The Divine Comedy; Ariosto, 
the southern Scott, wrote Orlando Furioso, a poem of chivalry. 
Scott is called, " the Ariosto of the North." 

1. 361. the lightning, "Before the remains of Ariosto were 
removed from the Benedictine church to the library of Ferrara, 
his bust, which surmounted the tomb, was struck by lightning 
and a crown of iron laurels melted away." — Hobhouse. 

1. 390. The friend of Tully. Servius Sulpicius wrote 
a letter to Cicero on the death of the latter's daughter. He 
spoke of the insignificance of an individual death as com- 
pared with the downfall of a state. 

1. 425. Etrurian Athens. Florence. 

1. 433. the goddess. The statue of Venus de Medici. 

1. 448. the paltry jargon. The technical language of art 
critics. 

1. 450. Paris, in recognition of the beauty of Venus, 
awarded her the golden apple. 

1. 452. ^neas was the son of Anchises and Venus. 

1. 478. Santa Croce. Byron in a letter says of this 
church, " The tombs of Machiavelli, Michael Angelo, Galileo, 
and Alfieri, make it the Westminster Abbey of Italy." 

1. 495. Canova. The famous sculptor died in 1822. 

1. 498. The bard of prose. Boccaccio. 

1. 505. Dante sleeps afar. He was buried at Ravenna 
and Scipio beside the sea at Liternum. 

1. 511. Petrarch's laureate brow. Petrarch was crowned 
poet laureate in the Capitol at Rome. His father had been 
banished from Florence when Petrarch was very 5^oung. 

1. 514. Boccaccio. He was buried at Certaldo near the 
place of his birth, but his tombstone was uprooted because 
he had been the enemy of monks. 

1. 525. Caesar's pageant. At the funeral of the sister of 



140 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Brutus the busts of the men who took part in the assassination 
were excluded from the procession. 

L 532. pyramid. " I went to the Medici Chapel — fine 
frippery, in great slabs of various expensive stones, to com 
memorate fifty rotten and forgotten carcasses." — Byron. 

1. 542. Arno's dome. The Florence picture gallery. 

1. 551. defiles. Where Hannibal defeated the Romans. 

I. 557. torrents swollen to rivers. Poets seem unable 
to speak without exaggeration of blood-shedding in battles. 

1. 586. Clitumnus. A stream famous in pastoral poetry. 
It is tributary to the Tiber. A writer in the Quarterly Review 
said: " Perhaps there are no verses in our language of hap- 
pier descriptive power than the two stanzas which character- 
ize the latter river. In general poets find it so difficult to 
leave an interesting subject, that they injure the distinctness 
of the description by loading it so as to embarrass rather than 
excite the fancy of the reader ; or else, to avoid that fault, they 
confine themselves to cold and abstract generalities. The 
author has judiciously steered his course betwixt these ex- 
tremes; while they present the outlines of a picture as pure 
and brilliant as those of Claude Lorraine, the task of filling 
up the more minute particulars is judiciously left to the im- 
agination of the reader." 

1. 614. Velino. The waterfall of Terni, where the Velino 
river falls six hundred and fifty feet. 

1. 620. Phlegethon. A river of the lower regions. 

1. 655. Her never-trodden snow. Since Byron's day the 
Jungfrau has been climbed. 

1. 658. Acroceraunian. " Thunder heights " is the mean- 
ing of the name. 

1. 666. lyric Roman. Horace described Soracte as covered 
with snow. 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 141 

c 1. 703. Niobe. The goddess who wept for her seven 
children who were slain by Apollo and Diana on account of 
'Niobe' s boasting. 

I. 740. Sylla. Sylla, or Sulla, began his war with Mithri- 
dates before he had enjoyed the fruits of his victory over 
Marius. 

1. 764. His day. " On the 3d of September Cromwell 
gained the victory of Dunbar ; a year afterwards he obtained 

* his crowning merc^^ ' of Worcester ; and a few years after on 
the same day, which ho ever esteemed the most fortunate for 
Mm, he died " — Byron. 

• 1. 775. dread statue. In the Spada Palace at Rome is a 
■statue of Pompey which is said to be that at the feet of which 
iCsBsar fell in the Capitol as described in Shakespeare's 
Julius CcBsar. 

I 1. 781. Nemesis. Daughter of Night. She represented 
the righteous anger and vengeance of the gods. 

1. 784. thunder-stricken nurse. A bronze wolf, still 
•existing in Rome, is thought to be that which Cicero referred 
to in one of his orations. 

; I. 800. one vain man. Napoleon. Byron treated his 
■character at length in Chilcle Harold, Canto III., stanza 
XXXVI. 

1. 809. Alcides with the distaff. Hercules in the dress of 
a woman served Queen Omphale for three years and spun wool. 
It was Antony who loved Cleopatra. 

; 1. 832. custom's falsest scale. Byron showed himself the 
poet of revolution by inveighing against custom all his life 
long. He did little enough in a constructive way to help 
establish better customs. 

1. 843. War for their chains. About the time that Byron 
penned these words he also wrote, " I have simplified my 



142 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

politics into an utter detestation of all existing govern- 
ments." 

1. 858. Columbia. America sprang suddenly into fuU 
liberty as Pallas, or Minerva, sprang full-armed from the brain 
of Jove. 

1. 863. Washington. In the Ode to Napoleon Buona-% 
parte Byron wrote : — J 

"Where may the wearied eye repose 
When gazing on the Great ; 
Where neither guilty glory glows 
Nor despicable state ? 

Yes — one — the first — the last — the best, 
The Cincinnatus of the West, 
Whom envy dared not hate. 
Bequeath the name of Washington, 
To make man blush there was but one." 

And in Don Juan, Canto IX., stanza VIII. : — 

"George Washington had thanks and nought beside, 
Except the all cloudless glory (which few men's is) 

To free his country." i 

1. 86.5. France got drunk. A reference to the bloodshed 
and license brought about by the French Revolution. 

1. 883. tower. The tomb of Caeeilia Metella. 

I. 934. Yet I could seat me by this ivied stone. A writer,, 
in the Quarterly Review said of the fourth canto of Childi 
Harold: "His descriptions of present and existing scene 
however striking and beautiful, his recurrence to past actions 
however important and however powerfully described, become 
interesting chiefly from the tincture they receive from the 
mind of the author." 

1. 989. apostolic statues. On the top of the Pillar of Tra- 
jan stands a statue of St. Peter. The place it occupies was 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 143 

once taken by an urn which was supposed to hold the ashes 
of Trajan. 

1. 998. household blood. Alexander, while intoxicated at 
a feast, killed his friend Clitus. 

1. 1022. Rienzi. He led an insurrection against the 
nobles and was proclaimed tribune in 1347. 

1. 1027. Egeria. The nymph who counselled Numa. 

1. 1031. nympholepsy. A kind of ecstasy or frenzy said 
to take possession of one who looked on a nymph in a stream 
or spring. 

1. 1126. Our life is a false nature. John Morley says: 
"This melancholy and despondent reaction is the revolution- 
ary course — the product of the mental and social conditions 
of western Europe at the close of the eighteenth century." 

1. 1143. Couch. To operate surgically for the relief of 
cataract. 

1. 1147. Coliseum. The Flavian amphitheatre. It was 
begun by Vespasian in 75 a.d. and was completed five years 
later by Titus ; it was still used as late as the sixth century. 
Its shape is elliptical ; and its axes measure 617 and 512 feet. 
About 87,000 persons could be seated and about 15,000 more 
spectators could be admitted. In the arena wild beasts and 
gladiators fought, criminals and Christian martyrs were exe- 
cuted, and chariot races were held. Sometimes the space 
was flooded and sea fights took place. The external elevation 
consisted of four stages, the lower three of which each had 
eighty arches. During the Middle Ages great quantities of 
stone were taken from the Coliseum and were used for build- 
ing purposes. Even Michael Angelo was one of the plun- 
derers. 

1. 1184. Orestes. He was pursued by the Furies for 
having killed his mother. 



144 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL I 

1. 1207. Forgiveness. A strange word to come from the 
autlior of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers and tho poet of 
revolt. 

1. 1221. Janus. The god with two faces. 

1. 1252. Gladiator. He refers to the statue sometimes 
called The Dying Gaul. The poet passes beyond the moment 
represented by the sculptor and gives us the pictures that 
flickered in the gladiator's memory as he died. Here Byron 
is at his best. The subject suits his genius. No one has 
written lines that show a stronger sympathy with human suf- 
fering and human wrong. 

1. 1274. blame or praise. " When one gladiator wounded 
another, he shouted, ' He has it,' ' Hie habet,' or ' Habet.* 
The wounded combatant dropped his weapon, and, advancing 
to the edge of the arena, supplicated the spectators. If he 
had fought well, the people saved him ; if otherwise, or as they 
happenedHo be inclined, they turned their thumbs and he was 
slain." — HoBHOUSE. 

1. 127G. the stars' faint rays. Where can we find an 
example of contrast more skilfully wrought ! 

1. 1314. Pantheon. This, the most perfectly preserved 
of ancient Roman buildings, was built originally by Agrippa 
in 27 B.C., but was rebuilt by Hadrian. It is now used as a 
church and a place of sepulchre for eminent Italians. 

1. 1320. sole aperture. Light is admitted through an 
opening at the apex of the dome. 

1. 1326. Two forms. The story of the young mother, 
who with her own milk nourished her aged father, who was 
starving in prison, has often been told. 

1. 1351. The starry fable. The milky way was said 
to have been caused by the spilling of milk from the breast 
of Juno. 



CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE 145 

1. 1360. the mole. The mausoleum of Hadrian now used 
as a prison and known as the castle of St. Angelo. 

1. 1369. the dome. St. Peter's. 

1. 1370. Diana's marvel. The temple of Diana at 
Ephesus. 

1. 1375. Sophia's. The mosque of St. Sophia at Constan- 
tinople. This edifice, known originally as the church of the 
Divine Wisdom, was built by Justinian about 532. In 1453, 
when Constantinople passed into the hands of the Turks, 
Mahomet turned the church into a mosque. 

1. 1381. Zion's desolation. The temple at Jerusalem was 
destroyed in 70 a.d. by the Roman emperor Titus. 

1. 1433. Laocoon's torture. The original Laocodn group 
is in the Vatican. According to the tradition Laocoon 
attempted to assist his sons, who were attacked by serpents, 
and was strangled, together with his children. 

1. 1441. Lord of the unerring bow. The statue of Apollo 
Belvedere, so called because it is located in the belvedore or 
upper story of the Vatican. 

1. 1468. the Pilgrim. Childe Harold, the pilgrim, who 
was introduced in Canto I. as the traveller and moralizer, 
is here mentioned in Canto IV. for the first time. Byron at 
this point threw off the burdensome disguise, for he was aware 
that he had failed to secure for his hero that willing suspen- 
sion of disbelief on the part of the readers which constitutes 
poetic faith. 

1. 1475. let that pass. This and 1. 1197 suggests Ham- 
let's "We could, an if we would." 

1. 1495. from the abyss a voice. The Princess Charlotte, 
only daughter of George IV., and wife of Prince Leopold of 
Saxe-Coburg, died in childbirth, November 6, 1817. 

1. 1562. ' Arms and the man.' The first words of Virgil's 



146 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL "'" 

^neid. After the fall of Troy ^neas's star ascended, for 
he helped to found Rome. 

1. 1566. The Sabine farm. It was a country residence of 
the poet Horace. 

1. 1574. last by Calpe's rock. The last elaborate descrip- 
tion of ocean in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage was in Canto II. 
about stanza XXII. where the ship passed Calpe's straits at 
Gibraltar. 

1. 1576. Symplegades. Islands at the entrance to the 
Black Sea. 

1. 1587. That I might forget. This is the climax in the 
expression of individuality in poetry. Since Byron's time 
the individual has counted for less and mankind for more. 

1. 1603. Roll on, thou deep. This is Byron at his best, 
and few indeed are the poets who have done better. 

1. 1620. lay. There is in English literature, perhaps, 
no more famous error in grammar. 

1. 1648. And I have loved thee, Ocean. Swimming and 
boating were Byron's favorite sports. He once swam across 
the Hellespont and once swam for four hours and twenty 
minutes along the Grand Canal of Venice. 

1. 1672. sandal-shoon, and scallop-shell. These were the 
emblems of pilgrims. The shells on the hat signified that a 
pilgrim had visited one of the famous shrines. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 

When Byron left England for the last time, on April 
25, 1816, he went up the Rhine and crossed over to 
Geneva. There he met Shelley and passed the summer 
^vith him most pleasantly. Lake Geneva, or Lake Leman, 
as Byron preferred to call it, offered opportunity for the 
two poets to engage in their favorite pastime of boating. 
The}^ sailed over the lake from end to end and once were 
nearly wrecked at Meillerie. On the 2Gth and 27th of 
June, while Byron was detained by bad weather at an inn 
at Ouchy, he wrote The Prisoner of Chillon. 

For Byron, as for every one who sees it, the Cha- 
teau of Chillon became an object of intense interest. 
Situated on an isolated rock at the eastern end of the 
lake, its white walls can be seen for miles. It was 
founded at a very early period, though most of its towers 
date from the thirteenth century. In the sixteenth 
century it became famous as the prison of Francois de 
Bonnivard, the Genevese author and patriot. 

Bonnivard was born near Geneva in 1496 and was 
educated at Turin. In 1510 he became the prior of St. 
Victor. In 1519, having ardently maintained the cause 
of the Genevese against the duke of Savoy, he was ar- 
rested and was thrown into prison when the duke en- 
tered the city. After two years he was Hberated, but 
in 1530, while travelling in the service of the republic, 
he was captured by robbers and delivered into the hands 

147 



148 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

of the duke. For six years he was imprisoned in Chillon, 
but in 1536 was again Uberated by the Genevese. On 
his return to Geneva, which had now completely eman- 
cipated itself, he was received with great honors. Ho 
wrote a history of Geneva, and on his death left his books 
and manuscripts to the city for which he had suffered so 
bravely. 

The dungeon in which Bonnivard was imprisoned is 
really large and airy and is formed with two aisles like 
the crypt of a church. There are seven pillars to which 
prisoners were chained or fettered and one more pillar 
is half merged in the wall. The pavement is worn by 
the steps of Bonnivard and other political or religious 
prisoners who were there incarcerated. The floor of the 
cell is really about ten feet above the surface of the lake. 
Through various ^vindows light is reflected from the j 
water and at times the ceiling of the dungeon is tinted 
with blue. 

Byron's story, which he calls a fable is, of course, en- 
tirely fictitious ; but in a note attached to an early edi- 
tion he intimated that had he been better acquainted 
with the character and deeds of Bonnivard, he would 
have attempted to make his story accord more closely 
with the historical facts. 

At a later date Byron wrote the following bonnet : — 

SONNET ON CHILLON 

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind ! 
Brightest in dungeons. Liberty ! thou art, 
For there thy habitation is the heart — ■ 
The heart which love of thee alone can bind; 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 149 

And when thy sons to fetters are consigned — • 
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, 
Their country conquers with their martyrdom. 
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 
Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place, « 

And thy sad steps an altar — for 'twas trod, 
Until his very steps have left a trace 
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, 
By Bonnivard ! — May none those marks efface ! 
For they appeal from tyranny to God. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 
A Fable 



My hair is gray, but not with years, ° 

Nor grew it white 

In a single night, 
As men's have grown from sudden fears. 
My limbs are bowed, ° though not with toil, 5 

But rusted with a vile repose, 
For they have been a dungeon's spoil, 

And mine has been the fate of those 
To whom the goodly earth and air 
Are banned, and barred — forbidden fare ; lo 

But this° was for my father's faith 
I suffered chains and courted death ; 
That father perished at the stake 
For tenets° he would not forsake ; 
And for the same his lineal race 15 



150 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

! 

In darkness found a dwelling-place ; 
We were seven° — who now are one, 

Six in youth and one in age, : 

Finished as they had begun, 1 

• Proud of Persecution's rage ; 20 

One in fire, and two in field. 
Their belief with blood have sealed, 
D3dng as their father died, 
For the God their foes denied ; — 
Three were in a dungeon cast, 25 

Of whom this wreck° is left the last. 



II 

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould°. 

In Chillon's dungeons deep and old, 

There are seven columns, massy and gray, 

Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, - 30 

A sunbeam which hath lost its way. 

And through the crevice and the cleft 

Of the thick wall is fallen and left ; 

Creeping o'er the floor so damp. 

Like a marsh's meteor lamp° : 35 

And in each pillar there is a ring, 

And in each ring there is a chain ; 
That iron is a cankering thing, 

For in these limbs its teeth remain, 
With marks that will not wear away, 40 

Till I have done with this new day,° 
Which now is painful to these eyes. 
Which have not seen the sun so rise 
For years — I cannot count them o'er, 



THE PRISONER OF CHILL ON 151 

I lost their long and heavy score° 45 

When my last brother drooped and died, 
And I lay living by his side. 

Ill 

They chained us each to a column stone, 

And we were three — • yet, each alone : 

We could not move a single pace, 50 

We could not see each other's face. 

But with that pale and livid light 

That made us strangers in our sight : 

And thus together — yet apart. 

Fettered in hand, but joined in heart, 55 

'Twas still some solace, in the dearth 

Of the pure elements of earth, ° 

To hearken to each other's speech, 

And each turn comforter® to each 

With some new hope, or legend old, 60 

Or song heroically bold ; 

But even these at length grew cold. 

Our voices took a dreary tone. 

An echo of the dungeon-stone, 

A grating sound — not full and free 65 

As they of yore were wont to be : 

It might be fancy — but to me 
They never sounded like our own. 

IV 

I was the eldest of the three, 

And to uphold and cheer the rest 70 

I ought to do — and did — my best 



152 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

And each did well in his degree. ° 

The youngest, whom my father loved, 
Because our mother's brow was given 
To him — with eyes as blue as heaven, 75 

For him my soul was sorely moved° : 
And truly might it be distress 'd 
To see such bird in such a nest ; 
For he was beautiful as day — 

(When day was beautiful to me 80 

As to young eagles, being free) — 

A polar day, which will not see 
A sunset till its summer's gone. 

Its sleepless summer of long light, 
The snow-clad offspring of the sun : 85 

And thus he was as pure and bright. 
And in his natural spirit gay,° 
With tears for nought but others' ills, 
And then they flowed hke mountain rills, 
Unless he could assuage the woe 90 

Which he abhorred to view below.° 



The other was as pure of mind. 

But formed to combat with his kind 

Strong in his frame, ° and of a mood 

Which 'gainst the world in war had stood, 95 

And perished in the foremost rank 

With joy : — but not in chains to pine : 
His spirit withered with their clank, 

I saw it silently decline — 

And perchance in sooth did mine : lOO 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 153 

But yet I forced it on to cheer 
Those reUcs of a home so dear.° 
He was a hunter of the hills, 

Had followed there the deer and wolf ; 

To him this dungeon was a gulf, 105 

And fettered feet the worst of ills. 



VI 

Lake Leman° lies by Chillon's walls : 
A thousand feet in depth below 
Its massy° waters meet and flow; 
Thus much the fathom-line was sent no 

From Chillon's snow-white battlement. 

Which round about the wave inthrals : 
A double dungeon wall and wave 
Have made — and like a living grave, 
Below the surface of the lake, 115 

The dark vault lies wherein we lay. 
We heard it ripple night and day; 

Sounding o'er our heads it knock'd ; 
And I have felt the winter's spray 
Wash through the bars when winds were high 120 
And wanton in the happy° sky ; 

And then the very rock hath rock'd, 

And I have felt it shake, unshock'd. 
Because I could have smiled to see 
The death that would have set me free. 125 

I said my nearer brother pined, 
I said his mighty heart declined, 
He loathed and put away his food ; 



154 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

It was not that 'twas coarse and rude, 

For we were used to hunter's fare, 130 

And for the Hke had Httle care : 

The milk drawn from the mountain goat 

Was changed for water from the moat, 

Our bread was such as captives' tears 

Have moisten'd many a thousand years, 135 

Since man first pent his fellow-men° 

Like brutes within an iron den ; 

But what were these to us or him ? 

These wasted not his heart or hmb ; 

My brother's soul was of that mould 140 

Which in a palace had grown cold, 

Had his free breathing been denied 

The range of the steep mountain's side ; 

But why delay the truth ? — he died. 

I saw, and could not hold his head, 145 

Nor reach his dying hand — nor dead, — 

Though hard I strove, but strove in vain. 

To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. 

He died — and they unlocked his chain. 

And scooped for him a shallow grave 150 

Even from the cold earth of our cave. 

I begged them, as a boon, to lay 

His corse in dust whereon the day 

Might shine — it was a foolish thought, 

But then within my brain it wrought, 155 

That even in death his freeborn breast 

In such a dungeon could not rest. 

I might have spared my idle prayer — 

They coldly laughed — and laid him there : 

The flat and turfless earth above 160 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 155 

The being we so much did love ; 
His empty chain above it leant, 
Such murder's fitting monument ! 

VIII 

But he, the favorite and the flower, 

Most cherished since his natal hour, 165 

His mother's image in fair face, 

The infant love of all his race, 

His martyred father's dearest thought, 

My latest care, for whom I sought 

To hoard my hfe,° that his might be 170 

Less wretched now, and one day free ; 

He, too, who yet had held untired 

A spirit natural or inspired — 

He, too, was struck, and day by day 

Was withered on the stalk away. 175 

Oh, God ! it is a fearful thing 

To see the human soul take wing 

In any shape, in any mood : 

I've seen it rushing forth in blood, 

I've seen it on the breaking ocean ^ 180 

Strive with a swoln convulsive motion, 

I've seen the sick and ghastly bed 

Of sin delirious with its dread : 

But these were horrors — this was woe 

Unmix'd with such — but sure and slow : 185 

He faded, and so calm and meek. 

So softly worn, so sweetly weak, 

So tearless, yet so tender — kind. 

And grieved for those° he left behind ; 



156 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

With all the while a cheek whose bloom 190 

Was as a mockery° of the tomb, 

Whose tints as gently sunk away 

As a departing rainbow's ray — 

An eye of most transparent light, 

That almost made the dungeon bright, 195 

And not a word of murmur — not 

A groan o'er his untimely lot, — 

A httle talk of better days, 

A httle hope my own to raise. 

For I was sunk in silence — lost 200 

In this last loss, of all the most ; 

And then the sighs he would suppress 

Of fainting nature's feebleness. 

More slowly drawn, grew less and less, 

I listen'd, but I could not hear — 205 

I call'd, for I was wild with fear; 

I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread 

Would not be thus admonished ; 

I call'd and thought I heard a sound — 

I burst my chain with one strong bound, ° 210 

And rush'd to him : — I found him not, 

/ only stirred in this black spot, 

/ only lived — 7° only drew 

The accursed breath of dungeon-dew ; 

The last, the sole, the dearest link 215 

Between me and the eternal brink. 

Which bound me to my failing race, 

Was broken in this fatal place. 

One on the earth, and one beneath — 

My brothers — both had ceased to breathe : 220 

I took that hand which lay so still. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 157 

Alas ! my own was full as chill ; 

I had not strength to stir, or strive, 

But felt that I was still alive — 

A frantic feeling, when we know 225 

That what we love shall ne'er be so. 

I know not why 

I could not die, 
I had no earthly hope — but faith, 
And that forbade a selfish death. ° 230 



IX 

What next befell me then and there 
I know not well — I never knew — 

First came the loss of light, and air. 
And then of darkness too : 

I had no thought, no feeling — none — 235 

Among the stones I stood a stone. 

And was, scarce conscious what I wist. 

As shrubless crags within the mist ; 

For all was blank, and bleak, and gray; 

It was not night — it was not day, 240 

It was not even the dungeon-light, 

So hateful to my heavy sight, 

But vacancy absorbing space. 

And fixedness without a place ; 

There were no stars, no earth, no time, 245 

No check, no change, no good, no crime. 

But silence, and a stirless breath 

Which neither was of life nor death ; 

A sea of stagnant idleness, 

BHnd, boundless, mute, and motionless I' 250 



158 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

A light broke in upon my brain, — 

It was the carol of a bird° ; 

It ceased, and then it came again, 

The sweetest song ear ever heard, 
And mine was thankful till my eyes 255 

Ran over with the glad surprise. 
And they that moment could not see 
I was the mate of misery ; 
But then by dull degrees came back 
My senses to their wonted track ; 260 

I saw the dungeon walls and floor 
Close slowly round me as before, 
I saw the glimmer of the sun 
Creeping as it before had done. 
But through the crevice where it came 265 

That bird was perch'd, as fond and tame, 

And tamer than upon the tree; 
A lovely bird with azure wings, ° 
And song that said a thousand things, 

And seem'd to say them all for me! 270 

I never saw its like before, 
I ne'er shall see its likeness more : 
It seem'd like me to want a mate, 
But was not half so desolate. 
And it was come to love me when 275 

None lived to love me so again. 
And cheering from my dungeon's brink, 
Had brought me back to feel and think. 
I know not if it late were free. 

Or broke its cage to perch on mine, 280 

But knowing well captivity. 

Sweet bird ! I could not wish for thine ! 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 159 

Or if it were, in winged guise, 

A visitant from Paradise ; 

For — Heaven forgive that thought ! the while 285 

Which made me both to weep and smile — 

I sometimes deemed that it might be 

My brother's soul come down to me ; 

But then at last awa}'- it flew. 

And then 'twas mortal — well I knew, 290 

For he would never thus have flown. 

And left me twice so doulil}^ lone, — 

Lone — as the corse within its shroud, 

Lone — as a solitary cloud, 

A single cloud on a sunny day, 295 

While all the rest of heaven is clear, 
A frown upon the atmosphere, 
That hath no business to appear 

When skies are blue, and earth is gay. 

XI 

A kind of change came in my fate, 300 

My keepers grew compassionate" ; 

I know not what had made them so, 

They were inured to sights of woe. 

But so it was : — my broken chain 

With links unfastened did remain, 305 

And it was liberty to stride 

Along my cell from side to side, 

And up and down, and then athwart, 

And tread it over every part ; 

And round the pillars one by one, 3io 

Returning where my walk begun, 



160 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL | 

Avoiding only, as I trod, 

My brothers' graves without a sod ; 

For if I thought with heedless tread, 

My step profaned their lowly bed, 316 

My breath came gaspingly and thick. 

And my crush'd heart felt blind and sick. 

I made a footing in the wall,° 

It was not therefrom to escape, 
For I had buried one and all 320 

Who loved me in a human shape ; 
And the whole earth would henceforth be 
A wider prison unto me : 
No child — no sire — no kin had I, 
No partner in my misery ; 326 

I thought of this, and I was glad. 
For thought of them had made me mad ; 
But I was curious to ascend 
To my barr'd windows, and to bend 
Once more, upon the mountains high 330 

The quiet of a loving eye.° 

XIII 

I saw them — and they were the same, 

They were not changed like me in frame ; 

I saw their thousand years of snow 

On high — their wide long lake below, 335 

And the blue Rhone in fullest flow; 

I heard the torrents leap and gush 

O'er channelled rock and broken bush ; 

I saw the white-walled distant town,° 

And whiter sails go skimming doAvn ; 340 



THE PRISONER OF CHILL ON 161 

And then there was a httle isle,° 
Which in my very face did smile, 

The only one in view ; 
A small green isle, it seemed no more. 
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, 345 

But in it there were three tall trees. 
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, 
And by it there were waters flowing. 
And on it there were young flowers growing. 

Of gentle breath and hue. 350 

The fish swam by the castle wall. 
And they seemed joyous each and all ; 
The eagle rode the rising blast, 
Methought he never flew so fast 
As then to me he seemed to fly; 355 

And then new tears° came in my eye. 
And I felt troubled — and would fain 
I had not left my recent chain ; 
And when I did descend again. 
The darkness of my dim abode 3G0 

Fell on me as a heavy load ; 
It was as is a new-dug grave. 
Closing o'er one we sought to save, — 
And yet my glance, too much oppressed, 
Had almost need of such a rest. 365 



XIV 

It might be months, or years, or days, 
I kept no count, I took no note, 

I had no hope my eyes to raise. 

And clear them of their dreary mote ; 



162 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

At last men came to set me free, 370 

I ask'd not why, and reck'd not where, 
It was at length the same to me, 
Fetter'd or fetterless to be, 
I learn'd to love despair. ° 
And thus when they appeared at last, 375 

And all my bonds aside were cast. 
These heavy walls to me had grown 
A hermitage — and all my own ! 
And half I felt as they were come 
To tear me from, a second home : 380 

With spiders I had friendship made. 
And watch'd them in their sullen trade, 
Had seen the mice by moonlight play. 
And why should I feel less than they ? 
We were all inmates of one place, 385 

And I, the monarch of each race. 
Had power to kill — yet, strange to tell° ! 
In quiet we had learn'd to dwell — 
My very chains and I grew friends. 
So much a long communion tends 390 

To make us what we are : — even I 
Regained my freedom with a sigh.° 



NOTES 

1. 1. My hair is gray but not with years. Byron says 
Ludovico Sforza's hair turned gray in a single night. Do 
3^ou know of other cases in literature? How old was the 
Prisoner at this time? 

1. 5. My limbs are bowed. Can you describe the Pris- 
oner as you think he appeared at this time? How far had 
he recovered from the effects of the dungeon? See line 41. 
Was it best for the author to tell the story in the first person ? 

1.11. This. Is it the right word ? Why /a^Aer's faith? 

1. 14. tenets. From Latin teneo, to hold. It implies 
that the belief was maintained with determination and firmness. 

1. 17. We were seven. How many brothers were there, 
and how did each die ? 

1. 26. Wreck. Most of Byron's heroes are wrecks, but 
this wreck is sublime. 

1. 27. By what rhetorical means does Byron here em- 
phasize the change in subject ? 

1. 35. Like a marsh's meteor lamp. The gas which arises 
from decaying animal or vegetable matter often becomes 
luminous. The most familiar instance is the light that 
glimmers about many kinds of stale fungi. Such decay is 
the cause of " fox-fire " in rotten wood. In swamps the 
appearance is especially common ; and it is said to have led 
wanderers with false hope into mud and water from which 
they have been unable to extricate themselves. In literature 
it is known as ignis fatuus, Friar' Rush's lantern, Will o' the 
Wisp, etc. 

163 



164 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



^ 



1. 41. this new day, which now is painful. Is the Prisoner 
supposed to have written this immediately after his release? 

1. 45. score. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon, 
and it meant originally to cut. It now signifies either a 
reckoning, or the number twenty. It is supposed that in 
keeping count by cutting notches on a stick or in a stone that 
every twentieth number was denoted by a deeper notch or 
by a cross cut. 

Is it not possible that Byron intended the word to suggest 
the means by which the brothers kept a record of the passage 
of time? Contrast the last three lines of this stanza with 
stanzas VIII and IX. These three lines illustrate the con- 
densed style that should be found in brief lyrics such as 
sonnets. Thought is compressed into the briefest possible 
compass. It is expected that the imaginative reader will 
fill in the details from his own experience and be affected 
thereby perhaps more profoundly than had he assimilated 
details furnished by the author. One would have been fear- 
ful, had Byron expre sed an intention to expand these lines, 
that he would fail to write anything else so good. Yet 
stanza IX is the best part of this poem and is one of the most 
famous stanzas in English literature. 

1. 57. pure elements of earth. Bright waters, sunshine, 
and air. 

1. 59. comforter. What was the strongest bond which 
joined these brothers? Was it misery, family ties, or reli- 
gion? 

1. 72. in his degree. Were these adults who were im- 
prisoned? Was there actually much difference in their 
ages? Does degree signify the relations to each other that 
had been established in boyhood by their life at home ? Was 
the eldest of the three the eldest of all the brothers and the 



THE PRISONER OF CHILL ON 1G5 

youngest of the tliree the youngest of all? When did the 
mother die? Were the boys brought up under the austere 
discipline of a religious fanatic? Was the family circle 
happ3^ and was affection mutual and common among all its 
members? Does not the poet in stanza IV make you think 
of these things ? 

1. 76. my soul was sorely moved. Was it chiefly for 
the sake of the father, or the mother, or the younger brother 
himself, or for some other reason ? 

1. 87. gay. Depict the character of the young brother. 

1. 91. How do you like this line? 

1. 94. Strong in his frame. Would you expect him to 
endure confinement the longest? Depict his character. 

1. 102. Does this line help to interpret stanza IV ? 

1. 107. Lake Leman. Lacus Lemanus is the old Latin 
name for Lake Geneva. It is a body of water forty miles 
in length and from one and one-half to nine miles in width. 
At the eastern extremity, not far from Chillon, it is 1056 feet 
deep. The Rhone enters the lake at the eastern end as a 
glacier torrent and at the city of Geneva flows out again with a 
blue and rapid current. 

1. 109. massy. Probably deep and broad. Cf. line 29. 

1. 121. happy. Is this the best word? 

1. 136. pent his fellow-men. Byron never missed an op- 
portunity to speak for liberty. " The object of the poem," 
wrote Sir Walter Scott, "is to consider captivity in the ab- 
stract and to mark its effects in gradually chilling the mental 
powers and benumbing and freezing the animal frame, until 
the unfortunate victim becomes, .as it were, a part of his 
dungeon and identified with his chains." By showing cap- 
tivity in one of its most unjust aspects, Byron hoped to pro- 
mote reform. He chose to portray imprisonment for the 



166 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

sake of religion because he thought such imprisonment the 
most irrational and the least justifiable. Had he been better 
acquainted with the story of Bonnivard, he would have found 
the latter's career unsuited to the purposes of his poem, for 
the old hero was unfortunately wavering and inconsistent 
in his religious beliefs. 

1. 170. To hoard my life. Note the effect of hoard. Por- 
tray the character of the elder brother. 

1. 189. Those. " There is much delicacy in this plural. 
By such a fanciful multiplying of survivors the elder brother 
prevents self-intrusion ; himself and his loneliness are, as it 
were, kept out of sight and forgotten." — Hales. 

1. 191. mockery. What is this meaning? 

1. 210. I burst my chain with one strong bound. The 
climax of the poem. 

1. 213. I. What effect is sought through this repetition of 
I? 

1. 230. A selfish death. His religious scruples prevented 
his committing suicide. 

1. 252. carol of a bird. Could such a song have produced 
such an effect ? Is the psychology of the poem accurate ? 

1. 268. A lovely bird with azure wings. To-day bird lore 
is so popular that a poet would hardly dare introduce under 
ordinary circumstances a bird without having in mind some 
definite species. Would it have been better if the Prisoner 
at this point had spoken of a wren or pewee as having perched 
on his window-sill? 

1. 301. keepers grew compassionate. Why do you think 
the keepers grew compassionate? 

1. 318. I made a footing in the wall. Would he have made 
a footing in the wall if the bird had not sung? 

1. 331. The quiet of a loving eye. Does this line suggest 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 167 

the attitude of the Prisoner toward nature before he climbed 
to the window? Does it not rather express the feehng of 
some meditative person, like Wordsworth, who had hved long 
in a beautiful region and had become attached to the familiar 
surroundings ? 

1. 339. white-walled distant town. Villeneuve, an old 
Roman town. 

1. 341. A little isle. " Between the entrances of the 
Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, is a small island ; 
the only one I could perceive, in my voyage round and over 
the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees 
(I think not above three), and from its singleness and diminu- 
tive size has a peculiar effect upon the view." — Byron. 

1. 356. new tears. Why new? 

1. 374. to love despair. Is the Prisoner, like other heroes 
of the poet, only a disguise for Byron himself ? Is this part of 
the significance of the " fable " ? 

1. 387. strange to tell. Byron, it is said, had great com- 
passion for the sufferings of animals. In the first canto of 
Childe Harold he called the Spanish national sport a " sweet 
sight for vulgar eyes," and he expressed much sympathy for 
the wounded horses and bulls. 

1. 392. Regained my freedom with a sigh. How much of 
the Prisoner's individuality is left? Has he become merely a 
typical prisoner? 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 
ROBERT BROWNING 

THE LIFE OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Robert Browning, 'Hhe subtlest asserter of the soul 
in song/' was imaginer and inventor of a legion of men 
and women. Except Shakespeare, probably no one 
else ever bodied forth so many human forms. These 
fictitious and historical personages, with their vast dif- 
ferences of character, of social rank, and of intellectual 
fibre, show the breadth of his interests and sympathies. 
Any live coals among the black attracted him. 

In his poems about these people of his it is not the 
outward events that are to Browning the chief subject 
of interest. He is a student of mind and heart, a psychol- 
ogist, and it is in the reactions of the human spirit it- 
self that he finds his field of poetic endeavor. Thus, 
while another poet of an older day might tell us of a 
battle, indicating the chief actors and describing the 
main events and their effects directly and forcil^ly, 
Browning would portray the occurrences through the 
eyes of one of the fighters, show us how the circum- 
stances affected an actual contestant, how he acted and 
why. This is a modern method, and Browning was one 
of the pioneers in using it. He believed in nothing so 

168 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 169 

much as in the human individual. He realized that all 
progress or regress in society depends upon live souls 
and what they do and think. Thus, every moment in 
the mind of an individual, when a moral decision must 
be made, was to Browning sacred, — a crisis for the 
world. 

The love of nature which in Wordsworth we find 
supreme is in Browning secondary to a passion for 
humanity. He is even greatly interested in curious 
and warped characters if only they be genuine and 
have confidence in their own ideas and opinions. In 
this connection Henry van Dyke calls him a carver of 
gargoyles. (See My Last Duchess, Up at a Villa — 
Down in the City.) 

Having selected his characters, Browning often lets 
one of them talk the poem all out. In the course of his 
monologue one discovers all the essential facts of the 
situation, and one sees, besides, what are the opinions 
and nature of the speaker. He often begins as if the 
reader or some imaginary person had been engaged in 
conversation with him for some time. Thus the poem 
seems but a fragment of the speaker's talk, the heart and 
core of it, with no introduction or explanation. Under- 
standing this favorite method of Robert Browning, one 
finds his works less difficult to comprehend. 

For one beginning to read him, there remains, however, 
a difficulty in his use of language, which is so scholarly, 
so competent, so elliptical, so metaphoric, yet so uncon- 
descending often, that one can only understand it after 
many times re-reading. One must get acquainted with 
his mannerisms before one can enjoy any of his longer 
works. He cared very little to please by exterior beauty 



170 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

as (lid the earlier romantic poets. The tendency of his 
work is to make one look deeper and deeper into things 
as they are, and not to dwell with delight on expression. 
In this respect he is a true product of the scientific age 
in which we live. And in addition, one finds this poet 
always earnest, vigorous, profound, discriminating ; and 
often exquisite, inspiring, and splendid. » 

Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, one of the 
suburbs of London, in 1812. Among the groves still 
standing thereabout, he played and walked as a child, 
and there he composed some of his poems. In his early 
years he had many pet animals, and he was fond of col- 
lecting scientific material. His love for stories was fos- 
tered by the habits and tastes of his father and mother, 
and in his father's library were laid the foundations of 
that thorough culture and scholarship which his books 
evince. His father was a bank clerk, who delighted in 
books and constantly bought and read them. He de- 
lighted in his two children no less, and when Robert was 
a little fellow his father used to take him in his arms and 
walk to and fro in the dusky firelit library of an evening, 
singing him Greek odes to an old tune which was a favor- 
ite of his. Thus, too, was the tale of the Fall of Troy 
taught to the child and amply illustrated by the dog and 
cat and the red coals in the grate. From his mother, 
an earnest Scotch woman, he heard the old Highland 
lyrics so full of passionate sadness. All the father's read- 
ing was shared with the son. From intellectual begin- 
nings such as these he was able, without much experience 
in the schools, to make, under tutors, rapid advances in 
education. It was characteristic of him that he liked 
and studied everything. He learned to fence, to box, to 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 171 

ride, and to dance; he visited art galleries; he took 
lessons in cast drawing; he became able to converse in 
French ; he made a study of music ; he saw plays in the 
theatres, and took part in amateur dramatics. So 
strongly did all these things appeal to him that he found 
it hard to decide upon a career. It seemed that he 
might be musician, writer, or painter, as he chose. 

From early childhood he had followed his father's 
example in composing verses, and would go around the 
table making rhymes and spanning off the accents 
with his palm on the edge of the table. When he 
was twenty years old, his first long poem, Pauline, 
was published anonymously at the expense of his 
aunt, but it attracted little attention. A few years 
later, after a period of residence at the Russian capital, 
he brought out Paracelsus, a poem based on the ideas 
of the scientist of that name, who was called ''the 
father of modern chemistry." For this work he made 
extensive studies of the life and times of Paracelsus in 
the British Museum hbraries. 

At the request of bis friend, the actor Macready, 
Browning now wrote him a play, choosing as his theme 
the loyalty of the Earl of Strafford to his exceedingly 
difficult master, Charles I. This was staged and was 
reasonably successful. 

Plans for the long poem, Sordello, were now made, and 
he spent two years in Itsily in enthusiastic study and 
travel. "Italy," he used to say, "w^as my university." 
Sordello was an Italian poet or troubadour of the time 
when the allegiance of the people was divided between 
Emperor and Pope. The publication of Sordello did 
little to increase the fame of its writer on account of its 



172 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

style, which is at once compressed and discursive. It 
has beautiful passages, but they cannot be separated 
from the rest and still be understood. 

Soon followed Pippa Passes, a group of four dramatic 
episodes, all brought to their better ending by the un- 
conscious influence of Pippa, a young mill-worker, who, 
singing, passes by on her only holiday of the year. In 
this period were also published King Victor and King 
Charles, The Return of the Druses, A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, 
Colomhe's Birthday, Luria, and A Soul's Tragedy. All 
these and some shorter poems grouped as Dramatic 
Lyrics and Dramatic Romances were brought out in 
cheap paper covers in a series he called Bells and Pome- 
granates, referring to the embroidered border of the high 
]:)riest's robe {Exodus xxviii. 33-34). Situations in 
Italian history furnish the themes for most of these 
poems and dramas; though, as usual, the incidents 
are merely frames for the pictures of souls of men in 
the grip of some passion or difficulty. We see them 
aspiring, erring, failing, submitting, renouncing, fight- 
ing, achieving, — afive and human to their finger-tips, 
and painted in wonderful colors of philosophy and sym- 
pathy. These poems clearly show Browning's vigor of 
thought and feehng. He did not care to be popular, 
but wrote for humanity. He himself says of his Sordello, 
"My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a 
soul : little else is worth study." It is often said that to 
him the world was a great laboratory of souls where ex- 
periments were constantly being tried. He liked to ask 
himself : How would this man act under such or such 
conditions ? Would he be true to the highest principles, 
or would he excuse himself and fail ? Examples of these 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 173 

tests of men's character may be found among the selec- 
tions in this book. 

In 1846 Robert Browning married EHzabeth Barrett, 
the poet, and took her at once to Italy, where they spent 
the greater part of the fifteen years before the death of 
Mrs. Browning. Though an invahd, Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning was a woman of deep learning. Few women, 
if any, have surpassed her in poetry. Her personality 
was a rare one, delicate, strong, intelligent, tender, and 
beautiful, and her married life is commonly referred to as 
an example of the most perfect human companionship. 
At this time Browning wrote many of the shorter poems 
published in his collections called Men and Woinen and 
Dramatis Personam. He had also in mind the idea o,f his 
greatest work. The Ring and the Book. This he completed 
while residing in England with his father and his sister, 
after the death of his wife. Its twelve books relate in an 
unusual way a story of Itahan intrigue and crime and 
loyalty and justice. Each book tells what' one person, 
more or less concerned in the case, has to say about it. 
The characters thus revealed of Pompilia, of Capon- 
racchi, and of the Pope are among the finest drawn in all 
hterature. This poem and Sordello, and in a less degree 
some others, are difficult to understand without consider- 
able study, because of the very intimate knowledge of 
Italian history and politics which Browning possessed 
and used without explanations. 

There followed a period of composition upon the 
themes of Greek tragedy, which had always so deeply 
attracted Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Embodied in 
his poems Balaustion's Adventure and its sequel Aris- 
tophanes^ Apology occur transcripts of the Alcestis and 



174 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

the Hercules of Euripedes. He also translated in prose 
the Agamemnon of J^schylus. 

The later life of Browning was occupied with many 
long poems of less strength and beauty, — i^ec? Cotton 
Nightcap Country, Fifine at the Fair, The Inn Alhum-j 
and others. A tardy fame had come to him. Admired 
and beloved, and enjoying the intimate friendship of 
many fine personalities, he approached old age. His 
son's home in an old Venetian palace claimed much of 
his time, but he loved the village of Asolo which he had 
discovered in his youth. He had made arrangements 
for the purchase of a home there, and had named 
his last volume of poems Asolando in honor of Asolo, 
when at the home of his son in Venice he died, December 
12, 1889. He was buried December 31 in the Poets' 
Corner of Westminster Abbey. 

Bibliography 

The Poetical Works of Browning, 10 vols. The Macmillan 
Co. 

Browning's Criticism of Life, Revell. 

Browning Cyclopedia. The Macmillan Co. 

Browning's Message to his Time, Berdoe. 

Browning, Poet and Man, Cary. 

Guidebook to Browning, George Willis Cooke. 

Handbook to the Works of Browning, Mrs. Orr. The Mac- 
millan Co. 

Introduction to the Poetry of Browning, Alexander. 

Introduction to the Study of Browning's Poetry, Corson. 

Introduction to the Study of Browning, Symons. 

Life and Letters of Browning, Mrs. Orr. The Macmillan Co. 

Life of Browning, Dowden. 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 175 

Life of Browning, William Sharp. 

Life of Browning, Chesterton. The Macmillan Co. 

Literary Studies, Jacobs. 

Lyrical and Dramatic Poems of Browning. Edited by Mason. 

The Bible in Browning, Machen. The Macmillan Co. 



ROBERT BROWNING 

Cavalier Tunes 

i. marching along 

Kentish Sir Byng° stood for his King, 

Bidding the crop-headed° Parliament swing : 

And, pressing a troop unable to stoop 

And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, 

Marched them along, fifty score strong, 5 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 

God for King Charles ! Pym° and such carles 

To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous paries^ ! 

Cavaliers, up ! Lips from the cup. 

Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup lO 

Till you're — 

Chorus. — Marching along, fifty score strong, 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 

Hampden° to hell, and his obsequies knell. 

Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well ! 15 

England, good cheer ! Rupert° is near ! 

Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here. 



176 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Cho. — Marching along, fifty score strong, 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 

Then, God for King Charles ! Vym and his snarls 20 
To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles ! 
Hold by the right, you double your might ; 
So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight, ; 

Cho. — March we along, fifty score strong, | 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song ! 25' 



II. GIVE A ROUSE 



King Charles, and who'll do him right now ? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
Give a rouse° : here's, in hell's despite now, 
King Charles ! 

II 

Who gave me the goods that went since ? 5 

Who rais'cl me the house that sank once ? 
Who helped me to gold I spent since ? 
Who found me in wine you drank once ? 

Cho. — King Charles, and who'll do him right now ? 

King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now ? 10 
Give a rouse : here's, in hell's despite now. 
King Charles ! 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 177 



III 

To whom used my boy George quaff else, 

By the old fool's side that begot him ? 

For whom did he cheer and laugh else, 15 

While Noll's" damned troopers shot him? 

Cho. — King Charles, and who'll do him right now ? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now ? 
Give a rouse : here's, in hell's despite now. 
King Charles ! 20 



III. BOOT AND SADDLE 



Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 
Rescue my castle before the hot day 
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray, 

Cho. — Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 



II 

Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say ; 

Many's the friend there, will listen and pray 

'' God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay — 

Cho. — Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! " 

N 



178 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



III { 

Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay, 

Flouts castle Brancepeth the Roundheads' array : lo 

Who laughs, " Good fellows ere this, by my fay,° 

Cho. — Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! " 

IV 

Who ? My wife Gertrude ; that, honest and gay, 1 

Laughs when you talk of surrendering, ^' Naj?- ! 

I've better counsellors; what counsel they? 16 

Cho. — Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! " 



The Lost Leader 

Just for a handful of silver he left us. 

Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us. 

Lost all the others she lets us devote° ; 
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, 5 

So much was theirs who so little allowed ; 
How all our copper had gone for his service ! 

Rags — were they purple, his heart had been proud ! 
We that had loved him so, followed him, honored 
him, 

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, lO 

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our pattern to Uve and to die ! 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 179 

Shakespeare was of iis,° Milton was for us, 

Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch from 
their graves ! 

He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 15 

He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves ! 

We shall march prospering — not through his presence ; 

Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre ; 
Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his quiescence,^ 

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire : 20 
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more. 

One task more declined, one more footpath untrod. 
One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels. 

One wrong more to man, one more insult to God ! 
Life's night begins : let him never come back to us ! 25 

There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain. 
Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twilight. 

Never glad confident morning again ! 
Best° fight on well, for we taught him — strike gallantly, 

Menace° our heart ere we master his own ; 30 

Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us. 

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne ! 



How They brought the Good News from Ghent 
TO Aix 

[16-] 

I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he ; 
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; 
'^ Good speed ! " cried the watch, ° as the gate-bolts 
undrew ; 



180 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

" Speed ! " echoed the wall to us galloping through ; 
Behind shut the postern, ° the hghts sank to rest, 5 
And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 

Not a word to each other ; we kept the great pace 
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our 

place ; 
I turned in my saddle and made its girths° tight, 
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique right, lO 
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, 
Nor galloped° less steadily Roland a whit. 

'Twas moonset at starting ; but while we drew near . 
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear ; 
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see ; 15 

At Diiffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be ; 
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half- 
chime. 
So, Joris broke silence with, '' Yet there is time ! " 

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, 

And against him the cattle stood black every one, 20 

To stare through the mist at us galloping past, 

And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, 

With resolute shoulders, each butting away 

The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray : 

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent 
back 25 

For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track ; 
And one eyes' black intelligence, — ever that glance 
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance ! 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 181 

And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon 
His fierce hps shook upwards in galloping on. 30 

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned ; and cried Joris, '' Stay 

spur ! 
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, 
We'll remember at Aix " — for one heard the quick 

wheeze 
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering 

knees, 
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, 35 

As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. 

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, 
Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky ; 
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 
'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like 
chaff ; 40 

Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white,° 
And '' Gallop," gasped Joris, '' for Aix is in sight ! " 

^' How they'll greet us ! " — and all in a moment his 

roan 
Rolled neck and croup over, laj^ dead as a stone ; 
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight 45 
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, 
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim. 
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. 

Then I cast loose my buff-coat, ° each holster let fall, 
Shook off both my jack-boots,° let go belt and all, 50 
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, 



182 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without 

peer; 
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad 

or good, 
Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. 

And all I remember is, — friends flocking round 65 , 
As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground ; 
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, 
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine, 
Which (the burgesses° voted by common consent) 
Was no more than his due who brought good news 
from Ghent. 60 



Home Thoughts, from Abroad 

Oh, to be in England 

Now that April's there. 

And whoever wakes in England 

Sees, some morning, unaware. 

That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 5 

Round the elm-tree bole° are in tiny leaf, 

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 

In England — now ! 

And after April, when May follows, 

And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows ! lO 

Hark ! where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge 

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 

Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's edge — 

That's the wise thrush° ; he sings each song twice over, 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 15 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 183 

The first fine careless rapture! 

And though the fields look rough with hoary° dew, 

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew 

The buttercups, the little children's dower 

— Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower ! 20 



Home Thoughts, from the Sea 

Nobly, nobly. Cape Saint Vincent to the Northwest 

died away ; 
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz 

Bay; 
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar 

lay; 
In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned Gibraltar 

grand and gray ; 
" Here and here did England help me : how can I help 

England ?" — say,° 5 

Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God and pray,° 
While Jove's planet° rises yoncler, silent over Africa. 



Incident of the French Camp 

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon: 

A mile or so away 
On a little mound. Napoleon 

Stood on our storming-day ; 
With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, 

Legs wide, arms locked behind. 
As if to balance the prone brow° 

Oppressive with its mind. 



184 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Just as perhaps he mused '^ My plans 

That soar, to earth may fall, 10 

Let once my army-leader Lannes 

Waver at yonder wall " — 
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew 

A rider, bound on bound 
Full-galloping ; nor bridle drew 15 

Until he reached the mound. 

Then off there flung in smiling joy, 

And held himself erect 
By just his horse's mane, a boy : 

You hardly could suspect — 20 

(So tight he kept his lips compressed, 

Scarce any blood came through) 
You looked twice ere you saw his breast 

Was all but shot in two. 

" Well," cried he, ^' Emperor, by God's grace 25 

We've got you Ratisbon ! 
The Marshal's in the market-place. 

And you'll be there anon 
To see your flag-bird flap his vans° 

Where I, to heart's desire, 30 

Perched him ! " The chief's eye flashed ; his plans 

Soared up again like fire. 

The chief's eye flashed ; but presently 

Softened itself, as sheathes 
A film the mother-eagle's eye 35 

When her bruised eaglet breathes. 
'' You're wounded ! " '' Nay," the soldier's pride 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 185 

Touched to the quick, he said : 
'^ Tin killed, Sire ! " And his chief beside, 

Smiling, the boy fell dead.° 40 

Herve Rtel 

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety- 
two. 
Did the English fight the French, — woe to France ! 
And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter thro' the blue, 
Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks 

pursue, 
Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the 
Ranee, 5 

With the Enghsh fleet in view. 

'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in 
full chase ; 
First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, 
Damfrevilie ; 
Close on him fled, great and small, 
Twenty-two good ships in all ; 10 

And they signalled to the place 
*' Help the winners of a race ! 

Get us guidance, give us harbor, take us quick — 

or, quicker still, 
Here's the English can and will 1 '^ 

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt 
on board ; 15 

'' Why, what hope or chance have ships hke these 
to pass ? " laughed they : 



186 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

" Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage 

scarred and scored, 
Shall the ' Formidable ' here, with her twelve and eighty 
guns 
Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow 
way, 
Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons, 
And with flow at full beside ? 21 

Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide. 
Reach the mooring? Rather say, 
While rock stands or water runs. 
Not a ship will leave the bay ! " 26 

Then was called a council straight. 

Brief and bitter the debate : 

'' Here's the English at our heels ; would you have 

them take in tow 
All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and 

bow. 
For a prize to Plymouth Sound ? 30 

Better run the ships aground ! " 

(Ended Damfreville his speech.) 
Not a minute more to wait ! 
'^ Let the Captains all and each 
Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the 
beach ! 35 

France must undergo her fate. 

'' Give the word ! " But no such word 
Was ever spoke or heard ; 

For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all 
these° 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 187 

— A Captain ? A Lieutenant ? A Mate — first, sec- 
ond, third? 40 
No such man of mark, and meet 
With his betters to compete ! 

But a simple Breton sailor pressed^ by Tourville for 
the fleet, 
A poor coasting-pilot he, Herve Riel the Croisickese.° 

And, " What mockery or malice have we here ? " cries 

Herve Riel : 45 

" Are you mad, you Malouins° ? Are you cowards, 

fools, or rogues ? 

Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the 

soundings, tell 
On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell 
'T^vixt the offing° here and Greve° where the river 
disembogues° ? 
Are you bought by English gold ? Is it love the lying's 
for ? 50 

Morn and eve, night and day. 
Have I piloted your bay, 
Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of SoKdor.° 
Burn 'the fleet and ruin France? That were worse 
than fifty Hogues ! 
Sirs, they know I speak the truth ! Sirs, believe 
me there's a way ! 55 

Only let me lead the line, 

Have the biggest ship to steer, 
Get this ' Formidable ' clear. 
Make the others follow mine, 

And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know 
well, 60 



188 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Right to Solidor past Greve, 

And there lay them safe and sound ; 
And if one ship misbehave, 

— Keel so much as grate the ground, 
Why, IVe nothing but my life, — here's my head ! '^ 
cries Herve Riel. 65 

Not a minute more to wait. 

'^ Steer us in then, small and great ! 

Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron ! " 
cried its chief. 
Captains, give the sailor place ! 

He is Admiral, in brief. 70 

Still the north-wind, by God's grace ! 
See the noble fellow's face 
As the big ship, with a bound. 
Clears the entry like a hound. 

Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide 
sea's profound ! 75 

See, safe thro' shoal and rock, 

How they follow in a flock. 
Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the 
ground, 

Not a spar that comes to grief ! 
The peril, see, is past, 80 

All are harbored to the last. 

And just as Herve Riel hollas ''Anchor !" — sure as fate 
Up the Enghsh come, too late ! 

So, the storm subsides to calm : 

They see the green trees wave 85 

On the heights o'erlooking Greve. 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 189 

Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. 
'' Just our rapture to enhance, 

Let the Enghsh rake the bay,° 
Gnash their teeth and glare askance 90 

As they cannonade away ! 
'Neath rampired Solidor pleasant riding on the Ranee ! " 
How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's counte- 
nance ! 
Out burst all with one accord, 

" This is Paradise for Hell ! 95 

Let France, let France's King 
Thank the man that did the thing° ! " 
What a shout, and all one word, 

'' Herve Kiel ! " 
As he stepped in front once more, 100 

Not a symptom of surprise 

In the frank blue Breton eyes, 
Just the same man as before. 

Then said Damfreville, ^^ My friend, 

I must speak out at the end, 105 

Tho' I find the speaking hard. 
Praise is deeper than the lips : 
You have saved the King his ships, 

You must name your own reward. 
'Faith our sun was near eclipse ! 110 

Demand whate'er you will, 
France remains your debtor still. 
Ask to heart's content and have ! or my name's not 

Damfreville." 
Then a beam of fun outbroke 
On the bearded mouth that spoke, 115 



190 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



As the honest heart laughed through 
Those frank eyes of Breton blue : 
'' Since I needs must say my say. 

Since on board the duty's done, 

And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it 
but a run ? — 120 

Since 'tis ask and have, I may — 
Since the others go ashore — 
Come ! A good whole hohday ! 

Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle 
Aurore° ! " 
That he asked and that he got, — nothing more. 125 

Name and deed alike are lost : 
Not a pillar nor a post 

In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell ; 
Not a head in white and black 

On a single fishing smack, 130 

In memory of the man but for whom had gone to 
wrack 
All that France saved from the fight whence England 
bore the bell. 
Go to Paris : rank on rank 

Search the heroes flung pell-mell 
On the Louvre, face and flank ! 135 

You shall look long enough ere you come to Herve 
Kiel. 
So, for better and for worse, 
Herve Riel, accept my verse° ! 
In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more 
Save the squadron, honor France, love thy wife the 
Belle Aurore ! 140 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 191 



Pheidippides 

First I salute° this soil of the blessed, river and rock ! 
Gods of my birthplace, daemons and heroes, honor to 

all! 
Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co-equal 

in praise 
— Ay, with Zeus the Defender, with Her of the aegis 

and spear ! 
Also, ye of the bow and the buskin, praised be your 

peer, 5 

Now, henceforth and forever, — O latest to whom I 

upraise 
Hand and heart and voice ! For Athens, leave pasture 

and flock ! 
Present to help, potent to save. Pan — patron I call ! 

Archons° of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return ! 
See, ^tis myself here standing alive, no spectre that 

speaks ! lo 

Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, 

Athens and you, 
" Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid ! 
Persia has come, we are here, where is She ? " Your 

command I obeyed. 
Ran and raced : like stubble, some field which a fire 

runs through. 
Was the space between city and city : two days, two 

nights did I burn 15 

Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks. 



Into their midst I broke : breath served but for '^ Persia 

has come ! 
Persia })ids Athens proffer slaYes'-tribute, water and 

earth ; 
Razed to the ground is Eretria° — but Athens, shall 

Athens sink, 
Drop into dust and die — the flower of Hellas utterly 

die, 20 

Die with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, 

the stander-by ? 
Answer me quick, what help, what hand do you stretch 

o'er destruction's brink? 
How, — when? No care for my limbs! — there's 

lightning in all and some — 
Fresh and fit vour message to bear, once lips give it 

birth!" 
O my Athens — Sparta love thee° ? Did Sparta 

respond ? 25 

Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, mis- 
trust, 
Malice, — each eye of her gave me its glitter of grati- 
fied hate ! 
Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for excuses. 

I stood 
Quivering, — the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an 

inch from dry wood : 
'' Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still they 

debate ? 30 

Thunder, thou Zeus ! Athene, are Spartans a quarry 

beyond 
Swing of thy spear? Phoibos and Artemis, clang 

them ' Ye must ' ! " 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 193 

No bolt launched from 01umpos° ! Lo, their answer 

at last ! 
'' Has Persia come, — does Athens ask aid, — may 

Sparta befriend? 
Nowise precipitate judgment — too weighty the issue 

at stake ! 35 

Count we no time lost time which lags thro' respect to 

the Gods ! 
Ponder that precept of old, ' No warfare, whatever the 

odds 
In your favor, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is un- 
able to take 
Full-circle her state in the sky ! ' Already she rounds 

to it fast : 
Athens must wait, patient as we — who judgment 

suspend." 40 

Athens, — except for that sparkle, — thy name, I had 

mouldered to ash ! 
That sent a blaze thro' my blood; off, off and away 

was I back, 
— Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the false 

and the vile ! 
Yet '' O Gods of my land ! " I cried, as each hillock 

and plain, 
Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them 

again, 45 

'' Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honors we 

paid you erewhile? 
Vain was the filleted victim,° the fulsome libation! 

Too rash 
Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so slack ! 
o 



194 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

'^ Oak and olive and bay, — I bid you cease to en- 
wreathe 
Brows made bold by your leaf ! Fade at the Persian's 

foot, 50 

You that, our patrons were pledged, should never 

adorn a slave ! 
Rather I hail thee, Parnes, — trust to thy wild waste 

tract ! 
Treeless, herbless, hfeless mountain ! What matter if 

slacked 
My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to 

cave 
No deity deigns to drape with verdure ? — at least I 

can breathe, 55 

Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from the 

mute ! " 

Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge ; 
Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a 

bar 
Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the 

way. 
Right ! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure 

across : 60 

'' Where I could enter, there I depart by ! Night in 

the fosse° ? 
Athens to aid ? Tho' the dive were thro' Erebos, thus 

I obey — • 
Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise ! 

No bridge 
Better ! " — when — ha ! what was it I came on, of 

wonders that are ? 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 195 

There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he — majestical 

Pan ! 65 

Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss cushioned 

his hoof ; 
All the great God was good in the eyes grave-kindly 

— the curl 
Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's 

awe 
As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs grand I 

saw. 
" Halt, Pheidippides ! " — halt I did, my brain of a 

whirl : 70 

*' Hither to me ! Why pale in my presence ? " he 

gracious began : 
" How is it, — Athens, only in Hellas, holds me aloof ? 

" Athens, she only, rears me no fane,° makes me no 

feast ! 
Wherefore? Than I what godship to Athens more 

helpful of old ? 
Ay, and still, and forever her friend ! Test Pan, trust 

me ! 75 

Go, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have 

faith 
In the temples and tombs ! Go, say to Athens, ' The 

Goat-God saith : 
When Persia — so much as strews not the soil — is 

cast in the sea, 
Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your 

most and least, ° 
Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, made one cause with the 

free and the bold ! ' so 



196 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

" Say Pan saith : * Let this, foreshowing the place, be 
the pledge ! ' " 

(Gay, the Hberal hand held out this herbage I bear 

— Fennel, — I grasped it a-tremble with dew — what- 
ever it bode), 

"■ While, as for thee . . ." But enough ! He was 
gone. If I ran hitherto — 

Be sure that the rest of my journey, I ran no longer, 
but flew. 85 

Fames to Athens — earth no more, the air was my road; 

Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more on 
the razor's edge ! 

Pan for Athens, Pan for me ! I too have a guerdon 
rare ! 



Then spoke Miltiades. '' And thee, best runner of 

Greece, 
Whose limbs did duty indeed, — what gift is promised 

thyself ? 90 

Tell it us straightway, — Athens the mother demands 

of her son ! " 
Rosily blushed the youth : he paused : but, lifting at 

length 
His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered 

the rest of his strength 
Into the utterance — '' Pan spoke thus : ' For what 

thou hast done 
Count on a worthy reward ! Henceforth be allowed 

thee release 95 

From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or in 

pelf ! ' 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 197 

'' I am bold to believe, Pan means reward the most to 

my mind ! 
Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this fennel 

may grow, — 
Pound — Pan helping us — Persia to dust, and, under 

the deep, 
Whelm her away forever; and then, — no Athens to 

save, — 100 

Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the 

brave, — 
Hie to my house and home : and, when my children 

shall creep 
Close to my knees, — recount how the God was awful 

yet kind. 
Promised their sire reward to the full — rewarding 

him — so ! " 



Unforeseeing one ! Yes, he fought on the Marathon 

day : 105 

So, when Persia was dust, all cried " To Akropolis ! 
Run, Pheidippides, one race more ! the meed is thy 

due ! 
' Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout ! " He flung 

down his shield, 
Ran hke fire once more: and the space 'twixt the 

Fennel-field, 
And Athens was stubble again, ^ field which a fire 

runs through, no 

Till in he broke : '' Rejoice, we conquer ! " Like wine 

thro' clay, 
Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died — the bfiss ! 



198 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of 

salute 
Is still '' Rejoice ! '^ — his word which brought rejoic- 
ing indeed. 
So is Pheidippides happy forever, — the noble strong 

man 115 

Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, whom 

a god loved so well, 
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was 

suffered to tell 
Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he 

began, 
So to end gloriously — once to shout, thereafter be 

mute : 
*' Athens is saved ! " — Pheidippides dies in the shout 

for his meed. 120 



My Last Duchess 

FERRARA 

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall. 

Looking as if she were alive. I call 

That piece a wonder, now : Fra Pandolf's° hands 

Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 

Will't please you sit and look at her ? I said 6 

'^ Fra Pandolf " by (Resign : for never read 

Strangers like you that pictured countenance. 

The depth and passion of its earnest glance, 

But to myself they turned (since none puts by 

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 10 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 199 

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, 

How such a glance came there ; so, not the first 

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not 

Her husband's presence only, called that spot 

Of jo}^ into the Duchess' cheek : perhaps 15 

Fra Pandolf chanced to say " Her mantle laps 

Over my lady's wrist too much," or '' Paint 

Must never hope to reproduce the faint 

Half-flush that dies along her throat : " such stuff 

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 20 

For calling up that spot of joy. She had 

A heart — how shall I say ? — too soon made glad, 

Too easily impressed ; she liked whate'er 

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 

Sir, 'twas all one ! M}^ favor at her breast, 25 

The dropping of the daylight in the West, 

The bough of cherries some officious fool 

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 

She rode with round the terrace — all and each 

Would draw from her alike the approving speech, so 

Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good ! but 

thanked 
Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked 
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame 
This sort of trifling ? Even had you skill 35 

In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will 
Quite clear to such an one, and say, '^ Just this 
Or that in 3^ou disgusts me ; here you miss. 
Or there exceed the mark " — and if she let 
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 40 

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse. 



200 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

— E'en then would be some stooping ; and I choose 

Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt, 

Whene'er I passed her ; but who passed without 44 

Much the same smile ? This grew ; I gave commands" ; 

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands 

As if alive. Will't please you rise ? We'll meet 

The company below, then. I repeat, 

The Count your master's known munificence 

Is ample warrant that no just pretence 50 

Of mine for dowry° will be disallowed ; . 

Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed 

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go J 

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, - 

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 55 

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me° ! 



Up at a Villa — Down in the City 
{As distinguished by an Italian person of quality.) 

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to 

spare. 
The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city 

square ; 
Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window 

there ! 
Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at 

least ! 4 

There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect feast ; 
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more 

than a beast. 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 201 

Well now, look at our villa ! stuck like the horn of a 

bull 
Just on a mountain edge as bare as the creature's skull, 
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull ! 
— I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's 

turned wool. lo 

But the city, oh the city — the square with the houses ! 
Why?' 

They are stone-faced, white as a curd,° there's some- 
thing to take the eye ! 

Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry ; 

You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who 
hurries by ; 

Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the 
sun gets high ; 15 

And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted 
properly. 

What of a villa? Tho' winter be over in March by 

rights, 
'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered 

well off the heights : 
You've the brown ploughed land before, where the 

oxen steam and wheeze. 
And the hills over-smoked° behind by the faint gray 

olive trees. 20 

Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all 

at once ; 
In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April 

suns. 



202 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three 

fingers well, 
The wild tulip, at end of its tube, blows out its great 

red bell 
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to 

pick and sell. 25 

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to 

spout and splash ! 
In the shade it sings and springs; in the shine such 

foam-bows flash 
On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and 

paddle and pash 
Round the lady atop in her conch — fifty gazers do not 

abash, ° 
Tho' all that she wears is some weeds round her waist 

in a sort of sash. 30 

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though 

you finger, 
Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted 

forefinger. 
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn 

and mingle. 
Or thrid° the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem 

a-tingle. 
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala° 

is shrill, 35 

And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the 

resinous firs on the hill. 
Enough of the seasons, — I spare you the months of 

the fever and chill. 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 203 

Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church 
bells begin : 

No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence" rattles in : 

You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a 
pin. 40 

By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets 
blood, draws teeth ; 

Or the Pulcinello-trumpet° breaks up the market be- 
neath. 

At the post-office such a scene-pi cture° — the new- 
play, piping hot ! 

And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal 
thieves were shot. 

Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of 
rebukes, 45 

And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little 
new law of the Duke's ! 

Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don 
So-and-so, 

Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, St. Jerome and 
Cicero, ° 

'' And moreover " (the sonnet goes rhyming), " the 
skirts of St. Paul has reached, 

Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more 
unctuous° than ever he preached." 50 

Noon strikes, — here sweeps the procession" ! our 
Lady borne smiling and smart. 

With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords" 
stuck in her heart ! 

Bang -whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife ; 

No keeping one's haunches still : it's the greatest pleas- 
ure in life. 



204 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



\ 



But bless you, it's dear — it's dear ! fowls, wine, at 

double the rate. 55 

They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil 

pays passing the gate 
It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, 

not the city ! 
Beggars can scarcely be choosers : but still — ah, the 

pity, the pity ! 
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with 

cowls and sandals. 
And the penitents° dressed in white shirts, a-holdin 

the yellow candles ; 60 

One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a crosi 

with handles, 
And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the bette 

prevention of scandals : 
Bang-whang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the fife. 
Oh, a day in the city square, there is no such pleasure 

in life ! 

The Boy and the Angel 

Morning, evening, noon, and night, 
'^ Praise God ! " sang Theocrite. 

Then to his poor trade he turned. 
Whereby the daily meal was earned. 

Hard he labored, long and well ; . 5 

O'er his work the boy's curls fell. 

But ever, at each period. 

He stopped and sang, " Praise God ! '* 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 205 

Then back again his curls he threw, 

And cheerful turned to work anew. lo 

Said Blaise, the listening monk, '^ Well done ; 
I doubt not thou art heard, my son : 

" As well as if thy voice to-day 

Were praising God, the Pope's great way. 

" This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome 15 

Praises God from Peter's dome." 

Said Theocrite, '' Would God that I 

Might praise Him that great way, and die ! " 

Night passed, day shone, 

And Theocrite was gone. 20 

With God a day endures alway, 
A thousand years are but a day. 

God said in heaven, '^ Nor day nor night 
Now brings the voice of my delight." 

Then Gabriel,° like a rainbow's birth, 25 

Spread his wings and sank to earth ; 

Entered, in flesh, the empty cell. 

Lived there, and played the craftsman well ; 

And morning, evening, noon, and night, 

Praised God in place of Theocrite. 30 



206 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

And from a boy, to youth he grew : 
The man put off the stripHng's hue : 

The man matured and fell away 
Into the season of decay : 

And ever o'er the trade he bent, 
And ever lived on earth content. 

(He did God's will ; to him, all one 
If on the earth or in the sun.) 

God said, '^ A praise is in mine ear; 
There is no doubt in it, no fear : 

*' So sing old worlds, and so 

New worlds that from my footstool go. 

" Clearer loves sound other ways : 
I miss my little human praise." 

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell 
The flesh disguise, remained the cell. 

'Twas Easter day : he flew to Rome, 
And paused above Saint Peter's dome. 

In the tiring-room close by 
The great outer galler}^. 

With his holy vestments dight, 
Stood the new Pope, Theocrite : 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 207 

And all his past career 
Came back upon him clear, 

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, 55 

Till on his hfe the sickness weighed ; 

And in his cell, when death drew near. 
An angel in a dream brought cheer : 

And rising from the sickness drear, 

He grew a priest, and now stood here. 60 

To the East with praise he turned. 
And on his sight the angel burned. 

" I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell, 
And set thee here ; I did not well. 

" Vainly I left my angel-sphere, 65 

Vain was thy dream of many a year. 

" Thy voice's praise seemed weak ; it dropped — 
Creation's chorus stopped ! 

'' Go back and praise again 

The early way, while I remain. 70 

'' With that weak voice of our disdain. 
Take up creation's pausing strain. 

'^ Back to the cell and poor employ : 
Resume the craftsman and the boy ! " 



208 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Theocrite grew old at home ; 

A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome. 

One vanished as the other died : 
They sought God side by side. 



Evelyn Hope 

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
That is her book-shelf, this her bed ; 

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, 
Beginning to die too, in the glass ; 6 

Little has yet been changed, I think : 
The shutters are shut, no light may pass 

Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink. 

Sixteen years old when she died ! 

Perhaps she had scarceh^ heard my name ; 10 
It was not her time to love ; beside, 

Her life had many a hope and aim, 
Duties enough and little cares. 

And now was quiet, now astir, 
Till God's hand beckoned unawares, — 15 

And the sweet white brow is all of her. 

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope ? 

What, your soul was pure and true, 
The good stars met in your horoscope. 

Made you of spirit, fire and dew — 20 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 209 

And just because I was thrice as old 

And our paths in the world diverged so wide, 

Each was naught to each, must I be told ? 
We were fellow mortals, naught beside ? 

No, indeed ! for God above 25 

Is great to grant, as mighty to make, 
And creates the love to reward the love : 

I claim you still, for my own love's sake ! 
Delayed it may be for more lives yet, 

Thro' worlds I shall traverse, not a few : 30 

Much is to learn, much to forget 

Ere the time be come for taking you. 

But the time will come,° at last it will, 

When, Evehai Hope, what meant (I shall say) 
In the lower earth in the years long still, 35 

That body and soul so pure and gay ? 
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine,° 

And your mouth of your own geranium's red — 
And what you would do with me, in fine, 

In the new life come in the old one's stead. 40 



I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, 

Given up myself so many times, 
Gained me the gains of various men. 

Ransacked the ages, spoiled the chmes ; 
Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, 45 

Either I missed or itself missed me : 
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope ! 

What is the issue ? let us see ! 



210 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while ! 

My heart seemed full as it could hold ; 50 

There was place and to spare for the frank young smile, 

And the red young mouth, and the hair's young gold. 
So hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep : 

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand ! 
There, that is our secret : go to sleep ! 55 

You will wake, and remember, and understand. 

One Word More 

TO E. B. B. 



There they are, my fifty men and women 
Naming me° the fifty poems finished ! 
Take them, Love, the book and me together ; 
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. 

II 

Rafael made a century of sonnets, ° 6 

Made and wrote them in a certain volume 

Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil 

Else he only used to draw Madonnas ; 

These, the world might view — but one, the volume. 

Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you. lO 

Did she live and love it all her lifetime ? 

Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets. 

Die, and let it drop beside her pillow 

Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory, 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 211 

Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving — 15 

Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's, 
Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's ? 

Ill 

You and I would rather read that volume 

(Taken to his beating bosom by it), 

Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, 20 

Would we not ? than wonder at Madonnas° — 

Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, 

Her, that visits Florence in a vision. 

Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre — 

Seen by us and all the world in circle. 25 

IV 

You and I will never read that volume. 

Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple, 

Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. 

Guido Reni dying, all Bologna 29 

Cried, and the world cried too, " Ours, the treasure ! '' 

Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. 



Dante once prepared to paint an angel : 
Whom to please? You whisper " Beatrice. °'* 
While he mused and traced it and retraced it 
(Peradventure with a pen corroded 35 

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for. 
When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked. 
Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, 



212 POEMS NARRATIVE A WD LYRICAL 



I 



Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment, 

Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, 

Let the wretch go festering through Florence) — 

Dante, who loved well because he hated. 

Hated wickedness that hinders loving, 

Dante, standing, studying his angel, — 

In there broke the folk of his Inferno. 45 

Says he — " Certain people of importance " 

(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) 

" Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet.'' 

Says the poet — " Then I stopped my painting." 

VI 

You and I would rather see that angel, 50 

Painted by the tenderness of Dante, 
Would we not ? — than read a fresh Inferno. 



VII 

You and I will never see that picture. 

While he mused on love and Beatrice, 

While he softened o'er his outlined angel, 55 

In they broke, those " people of importance " 

We and Bice° bear the loss forever. 



VIII 

What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture ? 

This : no artist lives and loves, that longs not 

Once, and only once, and for one only, 60 

(Ah, the prize !) to find his love a language 

Fit and fair and simple and sufficient — 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 213 

Using nature that's an art to others, 

Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature. 

Ay, of all the artists living, loving, 65 

None but would forego his proper dowry, — 

Does he paint ? he fain would write a poem. 

Does he write ? he fain would paint a picture, — 

Put to proof art ahen to the artist's, 

Once, and only once, and for one only, 70 

So to be the man and leave the artist. 

Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow. 



IX 

Wherefore ? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement I 
He who smites the rock and spreads the water. 
Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, 75 

Even he, the minute makes immortal. 
Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute, 
Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. 
While he smites, how can he but remember, 
So he smote before, in such a peril, 80 

When they stood and mocked — '^ Shall smiting help 

us?" 
When they drank and sneered — ^^ A stroke is easy ! " 
When they wiped their mouths and went their journey, 
Throwing him for thanks — " But drought was pleas- 
ant.'' 
Thus old memories mar the actual triumph ; 85 

Thus the doing savors of disrelish ; 
Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat ; 
O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, 
Carelessness or consciousness — the gesture. 



214 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

For he bears an ancient wrong about him, 90 

Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, 
Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude — 
'' How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save 

us?" 
Guesses what is like to prove the sequel — 
^' Egypt's flesh-pots — nay, the drought was better." 9* 



Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant ! 
Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance, 
Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat. 
Never dares the man put off the prophet. 

XI 

Did he love one face from out the thousands, loo 

(Were she Jethro's daughter, ° white and wifely, 

Were she but the ^Ethiopian bondslave). 

He would envy yon dumb, patient camel, 

Keeping a reserve of scanty water 

Meant to save his own life in the desert ; 

Ready in the desert to deliver 

(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) 

Hoard and life together for his mistress. 

XII 

I shall never, in the 3^ears remaining. 
Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues. 
Make you music that should all-express me ; 
So it seems ; I stand on my attainment. 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 215 

This of verse alone, one life allows me ; 

Verse and nothing else have I to give you. 

Other heights in other lives, God wiUing; 115 

All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love. 

XIII 

Yet a semblance of resource avails us — 

Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it. 

Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, 

Lines I write the first time and the last time. 120 

He who works in fresco steals a hair-brush, 

Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, 

Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, 

Makes a strange art of an art familiar, 

Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets, 125 

He who blows through bronze may breathe through 

silver, 
Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. 
He who writes, may write for once as I do. 

XIV 

Love, you saw me gather men and women, 

Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 130 

Enter each and all, and use their service. 

Speak from every mouth, — the speech, a poem. 

Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, 

Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving : 

I am mine and yours — the rest be all men's, 135 

Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty. 

Let me speak this once in my true person, 

Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea, 



216 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence : 
Pray you, look on these my men and women, 140 

Take and keep my fifty poems finished ; 
Where my heart Hes, let vay brain lie also ! 
Poor the speech ; be how I speak, for all things. 

XV 

Not but that you know me ! Lo, the moon's self ! 

Here in London, yonder late in Florence, 145 

Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured. 

Curving on a sky imbrued with color. 

Drifted over Fiesole by twilight, 

Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth. 

Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, 150 

Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder, 

Perfect till the nightingales applauded. 

Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, 

Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs, 

Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, 155 

Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. 

XVI 

What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy? 

Nay : for if that moon could love a mortal, 

Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy), 

All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos), 160 

She would turn a new side to her mortal. 

Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman, — 

Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace. 

Blind to Galileo on his turret, 

Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats° — him, even ! 165 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 217 

Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal — 

When she turns round, comes again in heaven, 

Opens out anew for worse or better ! 

Proves she Hke some portent of an iceberg 

Swimming full upon the ship it founders, 170 

Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals ? 

Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire. 

Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? 

Moses, Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu 

Climbed and saw the very God, the Highest, 175 

Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. 

Like the bodied heaven in his clearness 

Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work, 

When they ate and drank and saw God also ! 

XVII 

What were seen ? None knows, none ever will know. 
Only this is sure — the sight were other, 181 

Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence, 
Dying now impoverished here in London. 
God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 185 
One to show a woman when he loves her. 

XVIII 

This I say of me, but think of you, Love ! 

This to you — yourself my moon of poets ! 

Ah, but that's the world's side, there's the wonder, 

Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you ! 

There, in turn I stand with them and praise you — 191 

Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 



218 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



XIX 



1 

i 

i 

4 



But the best is when I glide from out them, 

Cross a step or two of dubious twihght, 

Come out on the other side, the novel 195 

Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, 

Where I hush and bless myself with silence. 



Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, 

Oh, their Dante of the dread Inferno, 

Wrote one song — and in my brain I sing it, 200 

Drew one angel — borne, see, on my bosom ! 



NOTES 

Cavalier Tunes 

I. Marching Along. 

The ability of Browning to enter into the minds of "all sorts 
of people, his dramatic tendency, is evident here ; for he was 
more in sympathy with the progressive and liberal ideas of 
Cromwell than of the Cavaliers, yet he could assume the per- 
sonality of the Cavaliers and think their thoughts. 

1. 1. Sir Byng raised a troop of royalist soldiery and Joined 
Charles I at Nottingham in 1642 just before the battle of 
Edgehill. 

1. 2. The Parliament is called crop-headed because the 
Puritans disdained the long, curled locks of the Cavaliers and 
wore their hair cut close to the head. 

1. 7. John Pym was a leader of Parliament in its resistance 
to the king's tyranny. Carles. Fellows. 

1. 8. paries. Parliaments or consultations. 

1. 14. Hampden. Hampden, Hazelrig, Fiennes, young 
Harry (son of Sir Henry Vane), were also leaders of the Inde- 
pendent party. 

1. 16. Prince Rupert of Bavaria, a nephew of Charles I, 
was a bold royalist cavalry leader. 

Note the spirited marching metre. These songs suggest 
the romantic, convivial, and haughty nature of the Cavaliers. 

II. Give a Rouse 

1. 3. rouse. A shout of approval in answer to the toast. 
1. 16. Noll. A nickname for Oliver Cromwell. 
219 



220 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

III. Boot and Saddle 

Castle Braeepeth, near Durham, is represented here as 
being held by a woman against the Roundheads until her 
husband and his troop arrive. 

1. 11. fay. Faith. 

What does the metre suggest ? 

The Lost Leader 

This poem is one of Browning's earlier lyric monologues 
in which an imaginary speaker resents the desertion from 
the people's party of a famous poet who had been wouj 
over from his former opinions by royal gifts. | 

The occasion of the poem was the appointment of Words- 
worth as poet laureate by the king after his change of politics 
from liberal to conservative. Browning often stated that 
the poem was a piece of fiction in the sense that he did not 
intend to picture the personality of Wordsworth or to imply 
that he would change his opinions for a reward. 

The inference of the poem is that a poet paid by a royal 
patron would have his tongue fettered and would never dare 
to express fully the thoughts, needs, and hopes of the common 
people; that he would be but an ill-paid courtier, and the 
spokesman of the gentry, never taking part in the real prog- 
ress of the people toward freedom and truth. Inasmuch 
as he had formerly worked for reform, he would now seem to 
have lost character and to have become a time-server. 

1. 4. devote. Dedicate, consecrate. 

1. 13. of us, for us, with us. Are these prepositions nicely 
discriminated ? 

1. 19. quiescence. Refraining from aid. 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 221 

1. 29. Best fight on well. It is best for him to fight on. 

1. 30. menace. Threaten. Why does the speaker wish 
him to fight now against the people instead of returning 
to them? Does this show, in spite of his change of polities, 
a tacit admiration and respect for the lost leader ? 

How They Brought the Good News 

Like many others of Browning's narratives this story is 
told in the words of one of the persons concerned. Is this 
an interesting method ? 

Three men start out on horseback from Ghent with the 
message " which alone could save Aix from her fate." Why 
not one man? They pass a number of villages, Lokeren, 
Boom, Diiffeld, Mecheln, Aershot, Hasselt, — where one 
horse falls from exhaustion — Looz, Tongres, Dalhem, — • 
where the second horse falls. The third has just strength 
enough to gallop into Aix before it drops ; and so Aix is saved. 
The event is imaginary, not historical. It is the pluck and 
grit of horses and riders in this adventure that excites our 
sympathy and admiration. That Browning was a good 
rider and a lover of the horse, may be guessed from many 
of his poems ; for example, Muleykeh, Thro the Metidja to 
Abd-el-Kadr, Boot and Saddle. 

1. 3. watch. Guards were set to watch the city gates 
when closed at night. 

1. 5. postern. A small gate for foot passengers beside 
the large one. 

1. 9. girths. Consult the dictionary for the parts of the 
harness mentioned in the poem if you do not know them; 
stirrup, pique, hit, cheek-strap, spur. See also croup. 

1. 12. galloped. Can you distinguish between the pace 



222 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL .^ 

of the horses in Boot and Saddle and in this poem by their 
respective metres? Ghent was over one hundred miles from 
Aix. 

1. 41. Probably Charlemagne's church at Aix-la-Chapelle. 
The dome was 104 feet high and 48 feet in diameter. 

1. 49. buff-coat. A military coat of buff leather. 

1. 50. jack-boots. High military boots reaching above 
the knee. 

1. 59. burgesses. Citizens of the borough. 

Home Thoughts, from Abroad 

Spring is not the same in different climates. The gorgeous 
flowers of the South bring up in the poet's memory an exqui- 
site picture of the English spring. 

1. 6. bole. Trunk. 

1. 14. In what respect is the thrush wse f 

1. 17. hoary. Grayish white. 

Home Thoughts, from the Sea 

The writer is in a locality strongly suggesting the naval 
strength of his own land. The ship is passing the northwest 
coast of Africa. These four places were in view, — Cape 
St. Vincent, the southwestern point of Portugal, where in 
1797 the English fleet won a glorious victory over a Spanish 
fleet of double the size ; Cadiz Bay, where the second Spanish 
armada was destroyed by Essex and Raleigh ; Trafalgar, 
where, in 1805, Nelson won a famous victory over the French 
and Spanish fleets ; and Gibraltar, the magnificent rock fortress 
that guards the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, which 
England has commanded since 1704. 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 223 

1. 5. say, whoso turns. Let him say, whoever he be that 
prays here as I do. 

1. 6. pray. How to serve my country in return for all her 
services to me, is the question he puts to God. 

1. 7. Jove's planet. Jupiter. 

Incident of the French Camp 

This is one of the many stories of heroism that cluster 
round the figure of Napoleon. Ratisbon on the Danube 
w^as taken by the French under Lannes in 1809. A soldier 
bore the French flag into the conquered town and set it up 
in the market-place where Lannes had taken his stand. 
Immediately, though fatally wounded, he sprang upon a 
horse and rode out to the hill where Napoleon stood, to 
announce to him the victory. So proud and brave was he 
that he uttered no complaint and concealed his wounds until 
he fell at Napoleon's feet dead. The description of Napoleon 
is so characteristic that one recalls easily his very appearance 
in many pictures we have of him. 

1. 7. prone brow. His head bent forward. 

1. 29. Napoleon's flag had an eagle in the centre, vans. 
Wings or fans. 

1. 41. Note Browning's appreciation of all worthy, virile, 
and vigorous men ; and elsewhere his scorn of the coward, 
the sneak, the cruel selfish man, the weak truckling man. 

Herve Riel 

After the battle at the Hogue, 1692, between the French 
and English, twenty-two French ships, under command of 
Damfreville, escaped to San Malo, an island at the mouth of 



224 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

the Ranee River, and the English ships followed after. Out- 
side the harbor the French signalled for a pilot to guide them 
in. The pilots who responded informed the admiral that the 
channels were so full of rocks and shallows that there was 
danger for small vessels even at high tide. It was now the 
ebb of the tide and the battleships, being large and heavy, 
rode low in the water. What chance could they have of 
safety or of escape from the victors? Damfreville in de- 
spair was about to give orders to run the ships aground and 
burn them on the beach, knowing well that France must be 
ruined in the loss of her fleet. Ere his bitter resolve could 
be carried out, there stepped forward a common sailor, Herve 
Riel by name. His knowledge of the bay made him offer 
to guide, in safety, by a channel he knew, the biggest ship. 
The others could follow and anchor in the river Ranee below 
Fort Solidor. The result is well told in the poem. 

1. 39. For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid 
all these. Does each word here add to the picture? Notice 
the force and brevity of the narrative. 

1. 43. Pressed. Impressing or pressing sailors for the 
fleet was similar to conscripting or drafting soldiers for the 
army. Those chosen were required to enlist. 

1. 44. Croisickese. Herve Riel's home was Croisie, as 
he himself states later. 

1. 46. Malouins. People of Malo or St. Malo. 

1. 49. offing. The deep sea outside the harbor. 

1. 49. Greve. A name given to the sand flats near St. 
Malo exposed by low tide, 

1. 49. Disembogues. Flows into the bay. 

1. 53. Solidor. Harbor and fort of this mane at the 
mouth of the river. 

1. 89. rake the bay. Fire their guns across. 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 225 

1. 97. Observe what was offered Herve Riel as a reward. 

1. 124. Belle Aurora. Beautiful dawn. Why do you 
think he did not ask for more? 

1. 138. What is the only monument to his name? Is it 
not a good one ? 

Pheidippides 

This legend of Pheidippides, the Athenian runner, is re- 
corded by Herodotus. Darius, the Persian, emboldened by 
the capture of Eretria, sent messengers to Athens to demand 
earth and water, the symbols of allegiance. The Athenians, 
who took a noble pride in their city as the centre of wisdom 
and art for the civilized world, trusted not a little in Athenae, 
their patron goddess, and in their splendid citadel, the akrop- 
olis. Proudly refusing submission to the approaching army 
of Darius the citizens sent a swift runner to Sparta to beseech 
her assistance in the forthcoming struggle. Sparta deliber- 
ated, and then answered that the oracles had warned her not 
to undertake any war when the moon was not full. There- 
fore she refused aid for the present. Pheidippides, with this 
answer, returned, as he went, in two days and nights, although 
he was detained on the way by an adventure. Burning with 
resentment at Sparta and chiding the gods that Athens wor- 
shipped for their lack of support, he was courageously crossing 
a difficult ravine on Mount Parnes, when he suddenly came 
upon the god Pan. This strange being, formed with hoofs 
and horns like a goat, was the patron of shepherds and 
dwellers in the wilds. Pan commanded him to halt and bade 
him tell Athens that the goat-god would aid them, though 
they had formerly refused to worship him. He said the 
Persians would be overcome in a field of fennel-weed, and that 
their bodies would strew land and sea. As a token he put 
Q 



226 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

into the hand of Pheidippides a bunch of fennel (called by the 
Greeks marathon). Something, also, he promised the runner 
for his proud devotion to his mother-city. 

Pheidippides reached Athens at last and reported the Spartan 
answer, related the colloquy with Pan, and showed the fennel- 
weed. Miltiades, the general of the Athenian army, question- 
ing him further, regarding the promise of Pan to himself, 
learned that Pheidippides hoped to be relieved from his 
public duties as messenger to fight in the Athenian ranks and 
that he desired one day to marry the girl of his choice and to 
rear up children to whom he would teach the worship of Pan, 
his patron and the new patron of Athens. 

Pleidippides did fight at Marathon, where the Persians 
were utterly routed. One more glory was reserved for him 
— to run with the news of the victory back to the city. There 
entering, he exclaimed with the remnant of his strength, 
" Rejoice. We are victorious," and overcome by the intensity 
of his joy and his service, he fell dead. The enthusiasm of 
his fellow-citizens over the ungrudging loyalty of Pheidippides 
caused them to turn his last words into a living epitaph. From 
that time, they began to say as a greeting, " Chairete " — 
" Rejoice." 

Xatpere, vLKCofiev. Rejoice, we conquer. 

1. 1. I salute. This is characteristic of the Greeks who 
loved their country dearly in its physical features. Many 
gods were supposed to be attached to certain localities, or to 
powers of nature; or they patronized people of a certain 
occupation. Pheidippides salutes Pan, as the equal of Zeus, 
and of Athense of the aegis (shield) and spear, and of Phoibos 
and Artemis of the bow and buskin (laced shoe), and summons 
him to the city to give aid. 

1. 9. Archons. Athens was governed by a body of nine 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 227 

rulers called archons. They wore on their heads golden 
grasshoppers {tettix) to signify the inherent right of the 
Athenians to their land, since they believed the race to have 
sprung from the soil itself in the remote past. 

1. 19. Eretria. An important city on the island of 
Euboea. 

1. 25. Sparta was more or less jealous of Athens; yet 
Pheidippides blames her too severely, it seems, since she 
really did send aid at the full moon, but too late to be of any 
assistance. 

1. 33. Olumpos. Olympus, a mountain in Greece* said 
to be the home of the gods. 

1. 47. filleted victim. Sacrificial victim decked with 
ribbons. 

1. 61. fosse. Ditch; here pass or clef t in the rock. 

1. 73. fane. Altar or temple. 

1. 79. The legend says that Pan appeared suddenly 
among the Persians on the field of Marathon and threw 
them into consternation, which lost them the battle. From 
Pan's habit of causing fright by his appearance arose the 
word panic. 

My Last Duchess 

The Duke, negotiating for the hand of a lady, shows her 
father's envoy the portrait of his former duchess. With 
much pride he exhibits it as a rare work of art, a wonder, 
because of the skilful portrayal of the vivid and expressive 
face. The Duke describes the nature of his wife, and how 
he regarded her. Incidentally he reveals himself. Of My 
Last Duchess Mr. Arthur Symons says: "The poem is a 
subtle study in the jealousy of egotism, not a study so much 
as a creation : and it places before us, as if bitten out by the 



228 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

etcher's acid, a typical autocrat of the Renaissance, with 
his serene self-composure of selfishness, quiet uncompromising 
cruelty, and genuine devotion to art." 

1. 3. Fra Pandolf. An imaginary artist, like Claus of 
Innsbruck in the last line. 

1. 45. commands. Explained by Browning as confine- 
ment in a convent or assassination. 

1. 51. dowry. An amount of money customarily given 
by the bride's father to the bridegroom on the occasion of 
the wedding. 

1. 56. Could you date the Duke by his character? Do 
you know any other stories that would seem to be contem- 
poraneous? Could this story have been told as well in some 
other form, as, for instance, that of the ballad ? 



Up at a Villa — Down in the City 

One can easily imagine Browning listening with inward 
amusement to a sociable Italian count forced to live in an 
ancestral villa on the mountain side. The speaker is a feeble 
sort of person, easily amused by the doings of others, but 
utterly unable to entertain himself or to get enjoyment from 
inanimate nature. In his own disparaging description of 
his country place we see much that a less sluggish nature 
would enjoy, — its dark cypresses and firs, its fields of wheat, 
its red tulips and bees and fireflies, its prospects of distant 
wooded mountains and sweeps of valley. With a greater 
fund of personal energy and joy in healthful activity, one 
would scarcely need the diversions he mentions. 

Villa. A country residence. 

1. 12. curd. Soured milk. 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 229 

1. 20. oversmoked. In March the olive trees on the 
distant hills look gray like smoke. 

1. 29. abash. Embarrass. 

1. 34. thrid. Pass in and out as a thread in sewing, hemp. 
The plant that furnishes the fibres from which rope is made. 

1. 35. cicala. Commonly called the locust. 

1. 39. diligence. Stage-coach. 

1. 42. Pulcinello-trumpet. Blown to announce a puppet 
play, in which the comic character Pulcinello or Punch 
appears. 

1. 43. scene-picture. Various announcements posted in 
the post-office. 

1. 48. Dante. Italian poet. Boccaccio. Italian novelist. 
Petrarca, Italian poet. St. Jerome. Italian churchman. 
Cicero. Roman orator. 

1. 50. unctuous. Full of religious fervor. 

1. 51. the procession. An Italian church procession in 
which an image of the Virgin is carried. 

1. 52. seven swords. To symbolize the seven great 
sorrows of Mary's life. What were they? 

I. 60. penitents. Those who have joined the procession 
in order to do penance for their sins. 

The Boy and the Angel 
This poem teaches that all service ranks the same with 
God. There is no high nor low. If, according to God's plan 
of the universe, each does his duty at his station whether 
small or great, the grand ideal will be realized and all will 
be right with the world. Our view is so limited that we are 
not competent to judge our work as either lofty or mean. A 
democracy of service is as fit as a democracy of privilege, 
which was the ideal of the poets of the Age of Revolution. 



230 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 



I 



1, 25. Gabriel. The heavenly messenger. In the Bible 
he appeared to Daniel, Zacharias, and the Virgin Mary. He 
is one of the four great archangels ; together with the other 
three, Michael, Uriel, and Raphael, he is said to have buried 
the body of Moses ; he is also named as the angel which 
destroyed Sennacherib's host. 

Evelyn Hope 

Evelyn Hope is one of Browning's many studies of the 
aspects of love. In the poem a man speaks in the room where 
lies dead a young girl whom he loved. She was sixteen, he 
thrice as old. Though she died ignorant of the love she had 
awakened, the lover's passion was not in vain. He will 
wait for other lives, believing that in the end God will create 
the love to reward the love ; and that the time will come, 
after the lover is fitted by learning and growing and gaining 
and forgetting, when he shall claim her. So as a token of 
remembrance he shuts a geranium leaf within the cold hand. 
The main idea of this, as of many others of Browning's poems, 
Is that love is in itself an entity worthy of God's respect, — a 
beautiful creation that cannot, because of any sort of human 
limitations, become void and purposeless. 

1. 33. the time will come. In some future existence he 
will speak to Evelyn Hope, and together they shall determine 
both the meaning of Evelyn's earthly beauty and the new 
service of the old lover in the new life. 

1. 37. Why your hair was amber I shall divine. The poet 
will not believe that mortal beauty perishes in the tomb. 
Sensuous attractiveness is spiritualized and is taken as the 
outward temporal evidence of a permanent loveliness. In 
The Statue and the Bust he wrote : — 



SELECTIONS FROM POEMS 231 



"What is the use of the lip's red charm, 
The heaven of hair, the pride of the brow, 
And the blood that blues the inside arm — 



Unless we turn, as the soul knows how, 
The earthly gift to an end divine." 



One Word More 

Soon after the marriage of Robert Browning and Eliza- 
beth Barrett, the latter placed in her husband's hands a 
group of sonnets expressing her love for him. These poems 
were published under the title, Sonnets from the Portuguese. 
Jn the poem One Word More, Browning in turn gives expres- 
sion to his devotion to his wife. The poem appeared in 1855 
in a volume called. Men and Women. It included fifty short 
poems, among which are Andrea del Sarto, Clean, Epistle to 
Karshish, Fra Lippo Lippi, etc. As the title indicates, he 
had displayed in these poems the inner self (as he saw it) of 
these fifty men and women. The ideas were supposed to 
be the ideas of the characters, not the sentiments of the indi- 
vidual poet. In One Word More, placed at the end of this 
volume. Browning dedicated the book to his wife and ex- 
pressed in this poem only his own sentiments. 

This display of his own personal feelings and ideas is so 
foreign to Browning's style that he compares his composition 
to Dante's painting a picture or Raphael's writing a poem. 
It is evident, therefore, that Browning's conception of the 
nature of poetry is different from that of Byron, who, it is 
said, forced his own sentiments and ideas through the lips 
of each of his characters. The difference, indeed, is typical 
of a change in the times. The struggle for the rights of the 
individual is giving place to a struggle for the rights of the 



232 POEMS NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL 

social whole. The ideals of self-renunciation and service are 
appearing in the poetry of to-day with increasing emphasis. 

1. 2. Naming me. Giving the name, Men and Women. 

1. 5. Raphael's lady of the sonnets appears in several 
of his best pictures. 

1. 21. Madonnas. As the Sistine Madonna of the Dresden 
gallery ; the Madonna di Foligno of the Vatican ; the Ma- 
donna del Granduca, formerly in the palace of the Grand Duke 
of Tuscany, but now in the Pitti gallery; the Madonna in 
the Louvre, known as La Belle Jardiniere from the fact that 
the Virgin is seated in a garden where lilies and other flowers 
grow. 

1. 33. Beatrice. Dante's love for Beatrice is perhaps the 
most celebrated love affair in literature. So idealized and 
spiritualized was his passion that some readers have believed 
that Beatrice never really existed. 

1. 57. Bice. Diminutive of Beatrice. 

1. 101. Jethro's daughter. Zipporah, the wife of Moses. 

1. 165. Keats represented Endymion as in love with 
Diana, or the moon. 



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Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 



m 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



OCT 5 ISM 




